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.
A month after releasing Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, over 75,000 copies of the book have been downloaded from the site ( and who knows how many copies have been circulated through mirrors, P2Pnets and email?). I’m tickled.
Shift Online has published a great, long article about the ways that the Bitchun Society parallels our present day world, based on an interview we did.
But here’s the kicker: Democracy — or the version of it that we know now anyway, that we’re most comfortable with — is already changing in the real world. Put on your Cory Doctorow goggles and re-examine today’s political landscape: “Internet politics are increasingly post-left-right dichotomy,” he says. “The medium is the message — I think that the internet makes you into a libertarian to a certain extent. Because you can see non-hierarchical, non-centralized systems working, and it becomes hard to credibly claim that we need increased centralization in order to create order or equity or equitableness.” We’ve seen that with the fall of Yahoo, he explains, which was a centralized listing of what was on the internet, edited by a very small group of individuals. The sites on Google, on the other hand, are ranked by everyone who owns a website. “It’s hard to be a left-winger in the sense of a centralized authority-endorsing individual, or a right-winger in that sense. There are lots of strange bedfellows that have been made, certainly. My friend Patrick Nielson Hayden was just in the march in D.C. and he described marching in a blogger contingent that included someone who was carrying a sign that said ‘Peace Now, Socialism Never’ alongside people who were old lefty red-diaper baby types.”
In such a climate, one of decentralization where the only criteria for participating in a movement is your belief in the cause at hand, maybe a Disney World overrun by fans isn’t quite so hard to fathom.
Dave Green has written a great piece about the economics of the Bitchun Society in the Guardian.
The problem with having everything you need is that it isn’t very dramatic. If you’ve heard that Cory Doctorow’s free-to-download sci-fi novel, Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom, depicts a near-future utopia that’s seen “the death of scarcity” (and “the death of death”), you might be wondering what sources of narrative tension might be left. Or is it all: “Tuesday. Got up. Had no shortage of anything I might possibly require. Wrote some music. Surfed the internet. Went to bed”?
Fortunately, it’s a bit more exciting than that. In the book, nanotechnology takes care of everyone’s basic needs, eliminating material scarcity. Handily, the “Bitchun Society” depicted by Doctorow doesn’t share our hangups with intellectual property either, which is all available online. As a result, the population doesn’t have any need for money. Instead, what they aspire to is “Whuffie”, which serves some of the functions of currency, but is much closer to such concepts as “the approval of your peers” or “respect”.
Update, Feb 29, 2004: Sadly, I no longer live close to Borderlands, the bookstore that was shipping inscribed copies for me — in fact, I now live 9,000 miles away! However, Borderlands still has a large supply of signed books and bookplates, and is happy to keep on selling them via mail-order wtih no shipping costs.
Looking for a signed copy of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom? By a happy coincidence, I live a couple blocks from Borderlands Books, an excellent science fiction bookstore in San Francisco that is happy to do mail-order.
So, if you’re interested in a signed copy, you can call (888.893.4008), fax (415.824.8543), or email your order to the store, and they’ll send you a copy (while supplies last!). There is no charge for media-mail shipping within the continental US.
Priority mail in the US will be $6.00 (that’s delivery within three
days or so). International will be Global Priority for $10 to Canada or
$12 elsewhere. To get the free shipping, just mention that you heard
about it here.
Foreword, the Book Design Blog, has posted an interview with me about the publication of the book and what it means for book-design in general.
Foreword: You’re allowing the book to be converted to HTML with customizable style sheets to suit an individual’s design/viewing pleasure. Do you see customizable books as a coming trend?
Doctorow: I see customizable data-presentation as an existing trend. We’re already accustomed to copying and pasting, resizing windows, up-sizing type. I think that when “book” meets “Web,” we’re not talking about a book anymore — just another text-file.
Foreword: Beyond that, where do you see the role of books going in our society? Will books become a swappable digital commodity, much like music has been and video is becoming?
Doctorow: Absolutely. I think that electronic text already dwarfs hardcopy text. More words are written and read off a screen today than off of paper.
Tim Jarrett records William Gibson’s response to a question about ebook distribution, both authorized and un-
“A colleague of yours in SF and blogging, Cory Doctorow, just released a novel simultaneously in print and in free download. It appears to be working well for him. What do you think this says about the future of publishing, or the book business in general?” Which was in retrospect not the wisest thing to ask, since (a) I”m sure someone from his publisher was there and (b) I was almost inviting him to take a stand on DRM in front of a software publisher that does DRM. But hey, why not?
He replied, “Someone said to me, and it”s an idea that I”m sitting on but I”m not entirely sure I disagree with, that piracy is a tax on popularity; it”s only the guys who are already on the bestseller lists who get downloaded.” Which I think is a way of saying that whether books are downloaded or sold in hard copy, there is still the awkward question of fame to determine whether you can make a living from them. I think I need to think about it some more.
Who wouldn’t want to live in Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, with no other responsibilities than to mind operations at the Haunted Mansion (Best. Ride. Ever.)? As it happens, our hero Jules is afforded this opportunity in near (?) future as part of the Bitchun Society, where death has been rendered obsolete, replaced by a memory storage process which requires everybody to be “online.” Live forever, download into a new body when necessary or whenever the mood strikes – imagine the Fountain of Youth as an FTP site.
Money is no object in the Bitchun Society, literally, as one’s wealth is determined by one’s ability to endear themselves to everybody else. By collecting points (known here as “Whuffie”), one is raised higher in the Bitchun Society’s caste system. As Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom opens, Jules’s Whuffie is modest enough to enjoy life tooling around Liberty Square. However, even in the land of the Mouse one has to watch out for rats.
Territorial wars are a-brewing, instigated when a faction of resident Mouseketeers decides to give the Hall of Presidents a cyber facelift. Jules, convinced that their leader was behind his most recent “death,” recruits girlfriend Lil and buddy Dan into rejuvenating the Mansion before control-freak Debra and her Hall “ad-hocracy” can get their hands on it. What begins as a proactive campaign to preserve the ride’s original charm, however, soon becomes a matter of pride for Jules which quickly threatens to destroy his relationships and his life. Soon there just doesn’t seem to be enough Whuffie to ease damage control.
With Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, author Doctorow creates a unique premise enhanced by a playful setting and witty dialogue. This is science fiction for the non sci-fi reader as well as for hardcore fans of the genre – think Carl Hiassen crossed with Phillip K. Dick…with just a dash of Disney magic.
This video from a Washington, DC newscast about free wireless networking features someone reading Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom online. (Thanks, Phil!)
Charlie “Hugo Nominee” Stross and I are having a two-week-long discussion on the WELL’s public Inkwell.vue conference, in honor of the publication of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. You can join in by emailing Charlie.
Social incentives are the most powerful forces in our world — the reason
you can’t wear your underwear on your head is because of disapprobation. The
most disruptive thing about the Internet is its ability to locate you in
homogenous communities that embrace the same values as you, so that there’s
no dialectic in socail pressure: IOW, you can spend all your time in
alt.underwear.on.my.head and never get the funny looks that would cause you
to reconsider your fashion choices. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing
(except when it is, i.e., alt.big.nazi.idiots), but it is a powerfully
disruptive thing.Sidebar: in our second collaboration, “Flowers from Alice,” we deal with
uploaded “people’ who can instantiate many copies of themselves in parallel.
One of the interesting things about this is that it suggests that attention
isn’t necessarily a scarce resource — if you need to do two things at once,
you just make another copy to do it…
