Down and out in the Magic Kingdom
Read Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom online at the Internet Archive. From the Back Cover "He sparkles! He fizzes! He does backflips and breaks the furniture! Science fiction needs Cory Doctorow." --Bruce Sterling, author of The Hacker Crackdown and Distraction On The Skids In The Transhuman Future 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 artistic 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....
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31recommend
102mentions
88people
2007–2026years
36% recommend60% neutral4% critical
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What Hacker News says
- Baxter's Flood, then Ark. Neal Stephenson's Seveneves, too. Down And Out in the Magic Kingdom is tonally similar, if you like Doctorow, although that explores a different manifestation of disconnection from others. All great for a romp
- > it can’t prevent deaths from accidents or foul play
Cory Doctorow's wonderful sci-fi book "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" explored exactly this in interesting ways. In the book people in the future can live essentially forever by transferring their consciousness into new bodies. They can also back up the contents of their consciousness, something most people do nightly but certainly before doing some dangerous extreme sport. Doing dangerous things without backing yourself up is considered tantamount to suicide since you lose all the memories and personal growth, essentially the person you became since your last backup.
People do get bored and will sometimes choose to "deadhead" for hundreds of years at a time, which is putting yourself into stasis and skipping those centuries. The book is full of provocative ideas about how practical immortality might actually work on a personal and societal level.
- Cory Doctorow wrote one of my favourite sci-fi novels, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" a few decades (!) ago about a battle between people maintaining the classic rides vs people trying to replace those rides with VR experiences.
It holds up.
- Of all the cyberpunk authors, Gibson, while one of the first, is probably the least interesting. Stephenson and Sterling are better writers and explore more complex ideas. Gibson has the occasional shadow of an idea that he explores with a few one dimensional characters. That said, I liked "Virtual Light".
Doctorow's late cyberpunk novels like "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" are also very good.
- The bit about monetizing one’s influence / social “capital” reminds me of Cory Doctorow’s novel _Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom_ (which is a great read regardless).
https://craphound.com/down/Cory_Doctorow_-_Down_and_Out_in_t...
- Cory Doctorow’s classic Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom as a service. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Ki...
