There is something fresh about the first novel from Canadian born Bay Area resident Cory Doctorow. Following on from his most obvious predecessor — the one all reviewers will be citing, Bruce Sterling — he has delivered in Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom the kind of science fiction novel that the band They Might Be Giants would have written if they’d OD’d on old cyberpunk novels and back issues of Theme Park Monthly. It’s cool, it’s hip, and it’s fun — but more importantly, it’s about something.

The post-singularity, post-scarcity 21st century North America of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is the province of the Bitchun Society — a socio-economic system based on a distributed reputation where ad-hoc groups of volunteers who have the coolest ideas and the most reputation points (“whuffie”) get to put their plans in effect. Just past his 100th birthday, Jules has lived long enough to see the end of scarcity, the defeat of death, the collapse of nation-states and resource-based economies, and the rise of the Bitchun society. Well into his third career, he’s now working with his much younger girlfriend Lil, whose parents were part of the original ad-hoc crew that took control of Florida’s Disney World, as a crowd-flow analyst for the crew that runs the Haunted Mansion at the theme park. But the crew’s position, protecting the traditions of the classic Haunted Mansion while heightening it as an experience, is threatened when a new high-tech crew takes over the nearby Hall of Presidents. Quaint old animatronics are stripped out and replaced by the latest and best in brain interface gaming: you can be Lincoln or Washington. And as the whuffie of the new crew skyrockets, Jules becomes increasingly convinced that they have plans for the Haunted Mansion — a suspicion that only grows when he’s murdered.

For all that Doctorow is clearly in love with his cool gadgets and neat ideas (there’s little doubt he’s a real sci-fi guy), Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is the kind of intelligent, clear-eyed social science fiction that is most obviously descended from the work of Pohl and Kornbluth in the early ’50s, through some of John Brunner’s work in the ’60s, to John Varley in the ’70s and Sterling in recent times. It also clearly marks Doctorow as one of today’s writers to watch. In what is a comparatively short novel, especially by today’s rather bloated standards, Doctorow sketches out a believable group of characters engaged in a society that seems to have been vat-grown in the interstices of Sterling’s Distraction. It has the same humid, sticky, lived-in feel, but where Sterling’s Oscar Valparaiso looked at the broader national and political stage, Doctorow focuses on a palimpsest of the political system, and, in doing so, makes his point just as effectively. The ideas are cool, the gadgets are neat, but, for all that the recipe is geeky, the final product is not. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is a sleek, tightly written book that, as the best science fiction should, engages the world.

About once every ten years, a Science Fiction novel appears that redefines the art form. One that describes a world different from our own, but recognisably ours – extrapolated from current trends, but richly evocative of its difference, adding words to the language that needed to be coined. Books like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, The HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy, Snow Crash and now Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.

What these books have in common are worlds that draw you in and make you believe in the technological underpinnings, accepting them implicitly and learning their terminology (TANSTAAFL, frood, Metaverse, Whuffie) as you go, while you follow the adventures of characters you come to care about.

Cory Doctorow’s “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” tells a gripping, fast-paced story that hinges on thought-provoking extrapolation from today’s technical realities. This is the sort of book that captures and defines the spirit of a turning point in human history when our tools remake ourselves and our world.

Cory Doctorow is one of our best new writers: smart, daring, savvy, entertaining, ambitious, plugged-in, and as good a guide to the wired world of the twenty-first century that stretches out before us as you’re going to find.

Doctorow has created a rich and exciting vision of the future, and then wrote a page-turner of a story in it. I couldn’t put the book down.

Wow! Disney imagineering meets nanotechnology, the reputation economy, and Ray Kurzweil’s transhuman future. As much fun as Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, and as packed with mind bending ideas about social changes cascading from the frontiers of science.

Doctorow is more than just a sick mind looking to twist the perceptions of those whose realities remain uncorrupted – though that should be enough recommendation to read his work. *Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom* is black comedic, sci-fi prophecy on the dangers of surrendering our consensual hallucination to the regime. Fun to read, but difficult to sleep afterwards.

Cory Doctorow rocks! I check his blog about ten times a day, because he’s always one of the first to notice a major incursion from the social-technological-pop-cultural future, and his voice is a compelling vehicle for news from the future. Down and Out in The Magic Kingdom is about a world that is visible in its outlines today, if you know where to look, from reputation systems to peer-to-peer adhocracies. Doctorow knows where to look, and how to word-paint the rest of us into the picture.

Cory Doctorow is the most interesting new SF writer I’ve come across in years. He starts out at the point where older SF writers’ speculations end. It’s a distinct pleasure to give him some Whuffie.

Imagine you woke up one day and Walt Disney had taken over the world. Not only that, but money’s been abolished and somebody’s developed the Cure for Death. Welcome to the Bitchun Society–and make sure you’re strapped in tight, because it’s going to be a wild ride. In a world where everyone’s wishes can come true, one man returns to the original, crumbling city of dreams–Disney World. Here in the spiritual center of the Bitchun Society he struggles to find and preserve the original, human face of the Magic Kingdom against the young, post-human and increasingly alien inheritors of the Earth. Now that any experience can be simulated, human relationships become ever more fragile; and to Julius, the corny, mechanical ghosts of the Haunted Mansion have come to seem like a precious link to a past when we could tell the real from the simulated, the true from the false.

Cory Doctorow–cultural critic, Disneyphile, and ultimate Early Adopter–uses language with the reckless confidence of the Beat poets. Yet behind the dazzling prose and vibrant characters lie ideas we should all pay heed to. The future rushes on like a plummeting roller coaster, and it’s hard to see where we’re going. But at least with this book Doctorow has given us a map of the park.