Volunteers have sent in copies of the novel in multiple file formats (PalmOS PDB, Apple Newton PKG, PalmOS Palm Reader, and Microsoft LIT). They’re linked off the downloads page.
All About:
Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom
24 hours after launching the site from which you can download my novel for free, the book has been downloaded over 20,000 times. It’s been Slashdotted, blogged to hell and back, and I’ve done a number of press interviews about it. What’s more, the title is currently sitting at #304 in the Amazon Sales Rank. Let’s call this one a success. I could not be more stoked. Damn.
Thanks to Jason Andrade for setting up a mirror of the downloads page in Australia for your antipodean convenience.
I’ve done an interview with Creative Commons about Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom in which I go into some depth about the motivation for releasing the book online, gratis.
Well, in some ways, this novel is a parable about Napster, and about the reputation economies that projects like Ringo, Firefly, Epinions and Amazon hint at. In a world where information is nonscarce, the problem isn’t finding generic information — it’s finding useful information. There’s an old chestnut in online science fiction fandom that the Internet “makes us all into slushreaders.” (“Slush” is the unsolicited prose that arrives at publishers’ offices — a “slushreader” wades through thousands of these paste-gems looking for the genuine article). This has always struck me as a pretty reactionary position.
Nearly every piece of information online has a human progenitor — a person who thought it was useful or important or interesting enough to post. Those people have friends whom they trust, and those friends have trusted friends, and so on. Theoretically, if you use your social network to explore the Web, you can make educated guesses about the relative interestingness of every bit of info online to you. In practice, this kind of social exploration is very labor-intensive and even computationally intensive, but there’s a lot of technology on the horizon that hints at this…
Scarcity is, objectively, worse than plenty. When you’ve got lots of some useful object, you’re richer than when you have less of it. When there’s more than enough to go around, the economic value tends to plummet, but the utility is just as high. Think of oxygen: on the Earth’s surface, we’re well-supplied with breathable atmosphere. Aside from a few egregiously West-coast “oxygen bars,” it’s hard to imagine paying money for O2. But in Heinlein’s sf novels set on the moon, there’s a thriving trade in oxygen. In both situations, air is highly useful, but dirtsiders are richer in air than their loonie cousins.
Modesty has used a cut-up engine called Alice — named for Jeff Noon’s brilliant Automated Alice — to slice and dice Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom into a bunch of random, interesting chunklets. It’s damned weird stuff and it warms my cockles.
“Honk!” she said, after a short queue of older men, then there was no way of mirrors and into hers as we stood by the time alternately moping, drinking, and plotting terrible, irrational vengeance on Debra for killing me, destroying my relationship, taking away my beloved (in hindsight, anyway) Hall of Presidents over for a couple glasses from the Bitchun Society didn’t need to convert its detractors, just outlive them. The first time I debarked for the patchy red welts from the computer where it disappeared into the discussion. If I needed to do that, too.” Was I really advocating being more like you and start playing. Others would pick up their own jokes, and even though he blew his spiel about half the time. “Lillian,” he said, cautiously. “Doctor Pete is a couple of days, starting the rehab is a terrific attraction, and it’s going to live, I’d like to have a backup made before she did.
My pal Bill Shunn — a hell of an sf writer and top-notch geek — has started a Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom webring for fansites devotes to the book. I am beside myself.
I anticipate a desire among fans of the book to visit the sites where it (took/will take) place, sort of like hitting the Stations of the Cross in a Catholic cathedral, and snap photos proving they were there. Hoping to be the first to do so, and maybe thereby accumulate some whuffie of my own, I present the “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom Whuffie Ring,” a web ring to let people link up their Down and Out fan pages.
So go ahead. Travel to Florida. Visit Liberty Square, the Hall of the Presidents, the Haunted Mansion. Get your picture taken with one of its 999 happy haunts. You loved Disney World when you were a kid–you know you did. Now’s your chance to show the world you love what it could someday be.
So, the book launches today. Theoretically, cartons of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom are arriving in bookshops all over the world, even as you read this. I’m pretty psyched.
This site is a way to keep track of the goings-on with the book: stores that are carrying it, new reviews, and general news about the book. I am immensely grateful to Mena Trott and Ben Trott for putting this site together, using their wonderful Movable Type blogging tool.
Most importantly, perhaps, is that this site is a place where you can download the whole goddamned book, completely gratis, in a variety of open, standards-defined formats. These books are licensed under a Creative Commons license. This is a somewhat novel idea. Not a lot of writers have published a free electronic edition simultaneous with their dead-tree-edition novels, and so perhaps a word of explanation is in order.
more
Writing in The Guardian, Ben Hammersley identifies “Whuffie” — the reputation currency in “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” — as one of “25 technologies and notions we think hold most promise over the next year.”
Whuffie
It’s the great conundrum of the web. Why do so many people do so much for free? What do people get out of it? Whuffie – that’s what. Coined by writer Cory Doctorow for his novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Whuffie embodies respect, karma, mad-props; call it what you will, the web runs on it. BH
(Thanks, Gnat!)
Review:
Wired Magazine
In a world of affluence and immortality, the big battles will be fought over culture, not politics. That’s the starting-point of Wired contributor Doctorow’s daring novel set in a futuristic Disney World where talent cooperatives vie to run the attractions. One faction wants to convert the Haunted Mansion into a theater that “flash-bakes” sensory impressions into patrons’ minds, offering them the thrill without the ride. Few challenges to copyright giants are as entertaining as this book.
Review:
Publishers Weekly
A lot of ideas are packed into this short novel, but Doctorow’s own best idea was setting his story in Disney World, where it’s hard to tell whether technology serves dreams or vice versa. Jules, a relative youngster at more than a century old, is a contented citizen of the Bitchun Society that has filled Earth and near-space since shortage and death were overcome. People are free to do whatever they wish, since the only wealth is respect and since constant internal interface lets all monitor exactly how successful they are at being liked. What Jules wants to do is move to Disney World, join the ad-hoc crew that runs the park and fine-tune the Haunted Mansion ride to make it even more wonderful. When his prudently stored consciousness abruptly awakens in a cloned body, he learns that he was murdered; evidently he’s in the way of somebody else’s dreams. Jules first suspects, then becomes viciously obsessed by, the innovative group that has turned the Hall of Presidents into a virtual experience. In the conflict that follows, he loses his lover, his job, his respect-even his interface connection-but gains perspective that the other Bitchun citizens lack. Jules’s narrative unfolds so smoothly that readers may forget that all this raging passion is over amusement park rides. Then they can ask what that shows about the novel’s supposedly mature, liberated characters. Doctorow has served up a nicely understated dish: meringue laced with caffeine.
