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Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom
Mar. 1st, 2003 10:20 pmHere's an interesting interview with Cory Doctorow, author of the much feted Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom - reviewed by Paul Di Filipo here and discussed by Dave Green here.
I've been meaning to write a thing or two about this ever since I read it, because it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that Doctorow's book has had a significant impact in geek/tech/sf circles. The links above just scratch the surface. It's already well on its way to becoming one of the year's key sf works; the bitchun society, with its weakly utopian base and reputation economy overlay, seems to be have been pre-packaged ready for deconstruction and debate. If you haven't read it, you're going to miss out on some interesting conversations.
Clearly, the novelty of the book's release under a creative commons licence is one of the reasons for the story's propogation. By now, the number of downloaded copies outweighs the 8,500 print run by a factor of at least ten to one. Whuffie is a memorably elegant concept, and combined with the real-world effect on Doctorow's profile it makes an irresistable hook for commentary.
The fact that the novel is a fine piece of speculative fiction doesn't hurt, though. Down and Out... is a work in the tradition of 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale. Forget character, forget style, forget plot (although the story has plenty of all three): This is about world-building, about uploading into an irreverant exploration of a post-cyberpunk, post-singularity brave new world. Could a reputation economy work? Should it work? Would we want it to work?
Have we already started to move in that direction?
I've been meaning to write a thing or two about this ever since I read it, because it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that Doctorow's book has had a significant impact in geek/tech/sf circles. The links above just scratch the surface. It's already well on its way to becoming one of the year's key sf works; the bitchun society, with its weakly utopian base and reputation economy overlay, seems to be have been pre-packaged ready for deconstruction and debate. If you haven't read it, you're going to miss out on some interesting conversations.
Clearly, the novelty of the book's release under a creative commons licence is one of the reasons for the story's propogation. By now, the number of downloaded copies outweighs the 8,500 print run by a factor of at least ten to one. Whuffie is a memorably elegant concept, and combined with the real-world effect on Doctorow's profile it makes an irresistable hook for commentary.
The fact that the novel is a fine piece of speculative fiction doesn't hurt, though. Down and Out... is a work in the tradition of 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale. Forget character, forget style, forget plot (although the story has plenty of all three): This is about world-building, about uploading into an irreverant exploration of a post-cyberpunk, post-singularity brave new world. Could a reputation economy work? Should it work? Would we want it to work?
Have we already started to move in that direction?
