Cory Doctorow - Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

PRAISE FOR DOWN AND OUT IN THE MAGIC KINGDOM

Fast, smart, fun, and flashy: Cory Doctorows Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is all of the above. That Doctorow is able to make readers understand and even sympathize with Jules far-out plight shows that hes got as firm a grip on human verities as on the twists and turns a technologically driven society might take.

The Seattle Times

The Singularity, or Spike, is deemed to be that moment at which mankind emerges into transhuman existence, with or without the help or hindrance of strong AI. (Doctorow eschews the AI, for the most part.) Envisioning such a future is one of the hardest tasks an SF writer can take on, but Doctorow proves himself equal to the challenge.

Paul Di Filippo, SF Weekly

Doctorow throws off cool ideas the way champagne generates bubbles[he] definitely has the goods to be a major player in postcyberpunk science fiction. His ideas are fresh and his attitude highly engaging.

San Francisco Chronicle

An amazing jobI was so engrossed in it, I didnt want to leave.

Wil Wheaton

A lot of ideas are packed into this short novel, but Doctorows own best idea was setting his story in Disney World, where its hard to tell whether technology serves dreams or vice versaDoctorow has served up a nicely understated dish: meringue laced with caffeine.

Publishers Weekly

Cory Doctorow doesnt just write about the futureI think he lives there.

Kelly Link, author of Stranger Things Happen

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is the kind of science fiction novel that the band They Might Be Giants would have written if theyd ODd on old cyberpunk novels and back issues of Theme Park Monthly . Its cool, its hip, and its funbut more importantly, its about somethingThe ideas are cool, the gadgets are neat, but, for all that the recipe is geeky, the final product is not. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is a sleek, tightly written book that, as the best science fiction should, engages the world.

Locus

In the true spirit of Walt Disney, Doctorow has ripped a part of our common culture, mixed it with a brilliant story, and burned into our culture a new set of memes that will be with us for a generation at least.

Lawrence Lessig, author of The Future of Ideas

Cory Doctorow rocks! Down and Out in The Magic Kingdom is about a world that is visible in its outlines today, if you know where to look, from reputation systems to peer-to-peer adhocracies. Doctorow knows where to look.

Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs

A gripping, fast-paced story that hinges on thought-provoking extrapolation from todays technical realities. This is the sort of book that captures and defines the spirit of a turning point in human history when our tools remake ourselves and our world.

Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus, Inc.

The ideas are an incredibly rich playground, and the author doesnt make you suffer through flat characters or clunky prose to get to them. On the contrary, these are totally alive characters set in a deeply conjured worldHighly recommended.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com

Wow! Disney imagineering meets nanotechnology, the reputation economy, and Ray Kurzweils transhuman future. As much fun as Neal Stephensons Snow Crash , and as packed with mind-bending ideas about social changes cascading from the frontiers of science.

Tim OReilly, publisher of OReilly and Associates

Black comedic, sci-fi prophecy on the dangers of surrendering our consensual hallucination to the regime. Fun to read, but difficult to sleep afterwards.

Douglas Rushkoff, author of Cyberia and Media Virus!

Doctorow has created a rich and exciting vision of the future, and then wrote a page-turner of a story in it. I couldnt put the book down.

Bruce Schneier, author of Secrets and Lies

Other Books by Cory Doctorow

A Place So Foreign and Eight More

The Complete Idiots Guide to Publishing Science Fiction

(with Karl Schroeder)

Essential Blogging

(with Rael Dornfest, J. Scott Johnson, Shelly Powers,
Benjamin Trott, and Mena G. Trott)

Eastern Standard Tribe

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

CORY DOCTOROW

Contents

Prologue

I lived long enough to see the cure for death; to see the rise of the Bitchun Society; to learn ten languages; to compose three symphonies; to realize my boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World; to see the death of the workplace and of work.

I never thought Id live to see the day when Keep A-Movin Dan would decide to deadhead until the heat death of the Universe.

Dan was in his second or third blush of youth when I first met him, sometime late-XXI. He was a rangy cowpoke, apparent twenty-five or so, all rawhide squint-lines and sunburned neck, boots worn thin and infinitely comfortable. I was in the middle of my Chem thesis, my fourth Doctorate, and he was taking a break from Saving the World, chilling on campus in Toronto and core-dumping for some poor Anthro major. We hooked up at the Grad Students Unionthe GSU, or Gazoo for those who knewon a busy Friday night, springish. I was fighting a coral-slow battle for a stool at the scratched bar, inching my way closer every time the press of bodies shifted, and he had one of the few seats, surrounded by a litter of cigarette junk and empties, clearly encamped.

Some duration into my foray, he cocked his head at me and raised a sun-bleached eyebrow. You get any closer, son, and were going to have to get a pre-nup.

I was apparent forty or so, and I thought about bridling at being called son, but I looked into his eyes and decided that he had enough realtime that he could call me son anytime he wanted. I backed off a little and apologized.

He struck a cig and blew a pungent, strong plume over the bartenders head. Dont worry about it. Im probably a little overaccustomed to personal space.

I couldnt remember the last time Id heard anyone on-world talk about personal space. With the mortality rate at zero and the birthrate at nonzero, the world was inexorably accreting a dense carpet of people, even with the migratory and deadhead drains on the population. Youve been jaunting? I askedhis eyes were too sharp for him to have missed an instants experience to deadheading.

He chuckled. No sir, not me. Im into the kind of macho shitheadery that you only come across on-world. Jauntings for play; I need work. The bar glass tinkled a counterpoint.

I took a moment to conjure a HUD with his Whuffie score on it. I had to resize the windowhe had too many zeroes to fit on my standard display. I tried to act cool, but he caught the upwards flick of my eyes and then their involuntary widening. He tried a little aw-shucksery, gave it up and let a prideful grin show.

I try not to pay it much mind. Some people, they get overly grateful. He mustve seen my eyes flick up again, to pull his Whuffie history. Wait, dont go doing thatIll tell you about it, you really got to know.

Damn, you know, its so easy to get used to life without hyperlinks. Youd think youd really miss em, but you dont.

And it clicked for me. He was a missionaryone of those fringe-dwellers who act as emissary from the Bitchun Society to the benighted corners of the world where, for whatever reasons, they want to die, starve, and choke on petrochem waste. Its amazing that these communities survive more than a generation; in the Bitchun Society proper, we usually outlive our detractors. The missionaries dont have such a high success rateyou have to be awfully convincing to get through to a culture thats already successfully resisted nearly a centurys worth of propagandabut when you convert a whole village, you accrue all the Whuffie they have to give. More often, missionaries end up getting refreshed from a backup after they arent heard from for a decade or so. Id never met one in the flesh before.