Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Huge props to Mark Neslon for bringing us another Cory Doctorow title. This is his first full-length novel – Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom:
Jules is a young man, barely a century old. He’s lived long enough to see the cure for death and the end of scarcity, to learn ten languages and compose three symphonies…and to realize his boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World.
Disney World! The greatest achievement of the long-ago twentieth century. Now in the keeping of a network of “ad-hocs” who keep the classic attractions running as they always have, enhanced with only the smallest high-tech touches.
Now, though, the “ad-hocs” are under attack. A new group has taken over the Hall of the Presidents, and is replacing its venerable audioanimatronics with new, immersive direct-to-brain interfaces that give guests the illusion of being Washington, Lincoln, and all the others. For Jules, this is an attack on the artistic purity of Disney World itself.
Worse: it appears this new group has had Jules killed. This upsets him. (It’s only his fourth death and revival, after all.) Now it’s war…
Cory is a true trailblazer. He makes all of his novels available for free under creative commons licensing. That means you can do stuff like… make an audiobook of it and give it away for free. Yeah, he’s that cool.
We’ve just kicked out 8 episodes in the default feed. Me? Well, even though I read the book four years ago, I’m going to listen. But I’m choosing a custom feed so I can get episodes of this free serialized audiobook delivered to me one at a time on a schedule that I choose. I’m picky that way.
March 25th, 2009 at 4:31 am
By the time I was half way through listening to this novel I reallised I was never really going to come to grips with all aspects of the strange world in which it resides, so I gave up and instead concetrated on the main essence of the story and the characters around which it revolves. After all it is not a particularly lengthy story and I suppose there is only so much detail that can be included. Fortunately my total comprehension wasn’t essential, and with a liberal amount of skill applied by Mr Doctorow in imparting this tale I was able to ignore this slight shortcoming.
I gave this story a fairly solid thumbs up. I was initially suspect of the eight instalments which though are of reasonable lenght, threatened to hasten things along too quickly and leave me short changed and disspointed on content. This was not the case. It has a well paced rather substantial plot that maintains an even level of interest and excitement throughout.
I liked the well defined characters that interacted so well with each other, their frivolous lifestyle in the advanced science of the time, and the light-hearted almost whimsical indulgencies of this strangely abundant society. The novel has been infused quite successfully with suspense and a slightly superfluous murder mystery component that work nicely and add an extra element of flavour. This is an enjoyable well written story that pretty much delivers everything suggested by the title, and neither the narration nor the audio quality can be faulted.
March 28th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Like everyone else i’m a big fan of Cory and apreciate the podiocast… but oh gawwwd, the whiny voice of the protaganist! give me a gun, i’ll shoot him myself, and his backups! The heat death of the universe cant come soon enough!
August 4th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
I loved this book. It was so creative. I hadn’t read or heard of it before. I thought the premises alone were already extremely entertaining. But then the plot and character development were also very interesting and somewhat compelling. Not to mention that in an understated kind of way the narrative was often hilarious.
I thought the reading was great. The delivery was deadpan but also committed, sincere, and believable. I thought it worked very well for the personality of the protagonist, and for the way the society in general was…not so much jaded as inured and desensitized to all of the outlandish circumstances and developments that were occurring.