Title: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Author: Cory Doctorow
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press 2003
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 208
Rating: 2/5 stars
Reading Challenges: Unread Shelf; Quarter of a Century
Where I Got It: Prospero’s in Kansas City, October 2021
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 care of a network of volunteer "ad-hocs" who keep the classic attractions running as they always have, enhanced with only the smallest high-tech touches.
Now, though, it seems 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: war for the soul of the Magic Kingdom, a war of ever-shifting reputations, technical wizardry, and entirely unpredictable outcomes.
Another absolute dud. This felt like Doctorow’s attempt to create a story a la Snowcrash, but it falls extremely flat. This future full of terrible fucking men is not a place that I’m interested in reading about. And yes, I understand that this is supposed to be future that we don’t want, but I still don’t want to read about it. Jules is a terrible narrator and main character. I couldn’t find reasons to root for him to feel anger at his “death.” Why do the female characters have to be wet blankets or villains? I think this book may just have turned me off to Doctorow’s writing.
Next up on the TBR pile:
