Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

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Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom. Cory Doctorow. Tor / Tom Doherty Associates, 2003


Story set in a post-scarcity, post-death society, where the currency is respect.


Review at http://trashotron.com/agony/reviews/2003/doctorow-down_and_out_magic.htm


Description

From the Wikipedia:

"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. 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.

In spite of that, bogus DMCA take down notices have been sent with regard to this novel. Cory Doctorow said "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom was the first novel released under a Creative Commons license, and I've spent the past four years exhorting fans to copy my work and share it. Now I've started to hear from readers who've seen this notice and concluded that I am a hypocrite who uses SFWA to send out legal threats to people who heeded my exhortation."[1]

The novel was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 2004." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Kingdom)


Details

Features the concepts:

  • "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.
  • 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."

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Kingdom)


Plot summary:

"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 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. Julius finally “cracks” when he sees his dreams turned to dust and he bashes up the attractions in the Hall of Presidents, in the process also damaging his own cranial interface to the point that he can no longer back himself up. This pushes his Whuffie to ground level when he is caught and gives Debra and her colleagues enough “sympathy Whuffie” to take over the Haunted Mansion, by invitation of the same fans that Julius had recruited to work in the Mansion.

Dan leaves Lil, Julius is kicked out of the ad-hoc and his Whuffie hits rock bottom — low enough that others take his possessions with impunity and elevators don’t stop for him. Then comes the revelation: a few days before Dan's planned suicide by lethal injection, Dan reveals that it was in fact he who had arranged to kill Julius, in collusion with Debra, in exchange for the Whuffie that her team could give him. Dan had asked one of his converts from his missionary days, a young girl, to do the dirty work. Debra then had herself restored from a backup made before this plan, so that she would honestly believe that she wasn't involved. He makes this public; Debra is thrown out, Julius gets sympathy Whuffie and, ironically enough, develops a friendly affection for his sweet young murderer. He never restores himself, because doing so would erase his memories of that entire year, his last with Dan, but lives with his deceased interface. The book is his attempt to manually document the happenings of the previous year so that, when this incarnation is eventually killed by age or accident, his restored backup will have a partial record of the transpiring events. Dan decides not to take the lethal injection, but to deadhead (putting oneself into a voluntary coma) till the heat death of the Universe." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Kingdom)