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Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Author | Cory Doctorow |
|---|---|
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction |
| Publisher | TOR |
| Publication date | 1 February 2003 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover & paperback) & ebook |
| Pages | 208 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-7653-0436-8 (hardcover) ISBN 0-7653-0953-X (paperback) |
| Followed by | Truncat |
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is a 2003 science fiction book, the first novel by Canadian author and digital-rights activist Cory Doctorow. Probably its most notable feature is the fact that, concurrent with its publication by Tor Books, Doctorow released the entire text of the novel under a Creative Commons license on his website, allowing the whole text of the book to be read for free and distributed without needing any further permission from him or his publisher.
The novel was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 2004.
Contents |
- Julius (a.k.a. Jules), the narrator of the book, is more than a century old. His childhood dream is living at Disney World (a.k.a. "The Magic Kingdom").
- Lil, age 23, long red haired and freckled, is Jules' girlfriend. She is 15 percent of Jules' age, but outwardly the same age. She was raised in Walt Disney World.
- Dan is Jules' best male friend. He is a former missionary for the Bitchun utopia who has lost the will to live now that there are no technophobes left to convert.
- Debra is one of the old guard of Disney World and a former comrade of Lil’s parents. She spent a decade in Disneyland Beijing, coding sim-rides.
- Tim is a programmer of synthetic memories.
- Tom and Rita are Lil’s parents who were "members of the original ad-hoc that had seized power in Walt Disney World, wresting control from a gang of wealthy former shareholders who’d been operating it as their private preserve".
- Zed (a.k.a. Zoya) is a transhuman who was married to Julius for 18 months, went crazy, and reverted to a backup from before she met Julius.
- Whuffie replaces money and is a constantly updated rating that measures how much esteem and respect other people have for you. This rating system determines who gets the few scarce items, like the best housing, a table in a crowded restaurant, or a good place in a queue for a theme park attraction.
- "Bitchun Society" is the dominant Earth culture in which rejuvenation and body-enhancement have made death obsolete, material goods are no longer scarce, and everyone is granted basic rights that in our present age are mostly considered luxuries.
- "Deadhead" is a verb and a noun for suspended animation; which is done for two hour plane trips, lenghy space voyages, and ten thousand year substitutes for suicide.
- Adhocracy is a type of organization that is an opposite of bureaucracy that has replaced corporations.
- "Sim-rides" are artificial intelligent software driven simulations of reality that communicate with each other and with the guests, greeting them by name each time they rode and spinning age-appropriate tales related to the theme of the ride.
- "Refresh" or a "restore from backup" is the cure for dying; which consists of creating a "force-grown" clone and downloading into its mind a backup of one's own mind created earlier. Synthesized memories (from other data sources filling in the time gap between last backup and death) was an innovation created recently in the book.
- "HERF gun", a narrow cylinder the length of a hand, is a High Energy Radio Frequency generator with a variable-dispersion yet directional and focused beam that can punch through a floor or wall and fuse everything there or can be used to disable the electronic interface in a brain without harming that brain; but is blocked by a Faraday cage.
This future history book takes place in the 22nd century, mostly in Walt Disney World. Disney World is run by rival adhocracies, each dedicated to providing the best experience to the park's visitors and competing for the Whuffie the guests offer.
- Prologue through Chapter 5
Julius and Lil work for the committee that oversees the Magic Kingdom's Liberty Square. After Julius is murdered and refreshed, he discovers that Debra's ad-hoc group has taken control of the The Hall of Presidents, and is going to replace its old-fashioned animatronic robots with the synthetic memory imprinting of an experience. Julius believes that this rival committee had him killed to get him out of the way for a while and seize the Hall in the interim. Fearing that they will next try to revamp his favorite ride, The Haunted Mansion, he resolves to take a stand against the virtualization of the park, endangering his relationship with both Lil and Dan; eventually Lil leaves Julius for Dan.
- Chapter 6 through Chapter 10
- The ending
"The universe gets older. So do I. So does my backup, sitting in redundant distributed storage dirtside, ready for the day that space or age or stupidity kills me. It recedes with the years, and I write out my life longhand, a letter to the me that I’ll be when it’s restored into a clone somewhere, somewhen. It’s important that whoever I am then knows about this year, and it’s going to take a lot of tries for me to get it right.
In the meantime, I’m working on another symphony, one with a little bit of “Grim Grinning Ghosts,” and a nod to “It’s a Small World After All,” and especially “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow.”
Jeanine says it’s pretty good, but what does she know? She’s barely fifty.
We’ve both got a lot of living to do before we know what’s what."
- Chapter five includes a description of a "Snow Crash Spectacular parade" based on Neal Stephenson's book Snow Crash.
- The book contains references to the Beatles song "Rocky Raccoon". Julius' girlfriend leaves him for his friend Dan, just as Lil leaves Rocky Raccoon for a man named Dan in the song. At the beginning of the book, Jules and Lil sing some lyrics from the song.
- Doctorow's short story "Truncat" is also set in the Bitchun Society, sometime after the events of Down and Out.
On February 8, 2004, Doctorow re-licensed his book. Under the new Creative Commons license, one can now make derivative works from the book without permission, provided the license and attribution is retained with each new work and the derivatives are not used commercially. Already, fans of the book have begun Russian and Spanish translations, an audio book version, and several amusing re-arrangements of the text. Doctorow has noted that he is pleased that people are building on his work, and that he hopes that further innovations will follow.
- 2003, USA, Tor Books (ISBN 0-7653-0436-8), Pub date 1 February 2003, Hardcover
- 2003, USA, Tor Books (ISBN ?), Pub date ? February 2003, e-Book
- 2003, USA, Tor Books (ISBN 0-7653-0953-X), Pub date 5 December 2003, Paperback
- The official site for the book on Cory Doctorow's homepage. Includes the full, free text of the book in many downloadable formats.
- 'The Bitchun Society', a prototype internet gift economy that follows the Whuffie system mentioned in the book.