0wnz0red is one of the best-known stories in this book, but it’s not available on this site. That’s because the story was originally published on Salon, and it’s still available there. Enjoy!
By the way, this story has made the preliminary 2003 Nebula ballot. That means that it will be presented to the members of the Science Fiction Writers of America as a candidate for the final award ballot. Cross your fingers!
One of the things that pleases me most about this book is the killer intro Bruce Sterling wrote for me. You can read it here.
There has been a chunk of science fiction influenced by Silicon Valley, but “0wnz0red” captures the disturbed inner world of the technically sociopathic. For years now I’ve been searching for a work of science fiction that could only have been written in the 21st century. “0wnz0red” has broken through. This story is fully realized, and it is sarcastic, abrasive, and mind-boggling in a truly novel way. Like Beat writing in its early period, “0wnz0red” has the dual virtues of being both really offensive and genuinely hard for normal people to understand. This work is therefore truly advanced. It deserves an epithet all its own: “Doctorovian.” We should all hope and trust that our culture has the guts and moxie to follow this guy. He’s got a lot to tell us.
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 A Place So Foreign and Eight More? 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.
Q: Can’t I just send some money to you by PayPal instead of buying the book?
A: You don’t have to buy the book, but I’m not interested in tipjar payments. I’m not doing this to compete with my publisher. If you read the ebook and want to pay me back, but don’t have any use for the dead-tree edition, the best way you can do that is to buy a copy of the book and donate it to a school, library or community center. If you do this, you’ll put a copy of the book on the shelf where it might be read, I’ll get a royalty, and my sales-figures will go up (which means that I’ll get a bigger advance on my next book and my publisher will be more likely to want to repeat the experiment).
This is pretty amazing: Jeff Bezos, the CEO and founder of Amazon, gave my book a plug on NPR’s Weekend Edition today, during a segment on summer reading.
I’ve created a mailing-list for occassional annoucnements of upcoming appearances, articles, stories and books. You can sign up here.
NASA’s astrobiology magazine has a good, in-depth review of the book in the current ish.
In his modernization of wearing your karma on your sleeve, society is governed by reputation and actions. This is not so much an ideal world, as a practical one which keeps considerable adventure and moves in anything but boring ways. ‘The whole point ..was to be more reputable than the next ad-hoc, to succeed on merit, not trickery, despite assassinations and the like.’
Therein lies Doctorow’s thesis: an internet-saavy version of personal capital, particularly one’s success rating with friends and neighbors. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom coins this all-encompassing and frequently updated reputation rating, one’s Whuffie.
While friends’ opinions may matter most in getting good Whuffie, a weighted score also makes room for those both likely– and unlikely– to be compatible. This version resembles a counterpoint system, and is called left-handed Whuffie: respect garnered from people who share very few of your own opinions. This is not a world of sycophants who seek mutual admiration. The future apparently holds true to both majority power, and also minority empowerment.
Modesty has fed copies of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Alice in Wonderland to the Alicebot, a remixer that algorithmically combines texts into interesting cut-ups. The output is wild.
They all made a rush at Alice had got to see if she were looking up into the hallway of mirrors and into the moonlight reflecting off the cake. ‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ cried Alice hastily, afraid that it was her turn to Earth with me, but stuck fast when his eye chanced to fall upon Alice, as she picked up a HUD with his head!’ or ‘Off with his knuckles. It was part of it.” Tom patted her arm.Casually, grinning, she raises her arm affectionately into Alice’s, and they started the game was going to dive in among the younger set, including the girl to shoot you and Debra nodded at him. “Oh, sure. Dan and Lil and I answered it. “Yes,” I subvocalized, impatiently.
I hated getting distracted from a hook beside the door. “Once I am in favor of a meritocracy, right? The best stuff survives, everything else gets supplanted. “Oh, shit, I hate the process. Not so much about Whuffie, one way of expressing yourself.’ The baby grunted again, and gave me a genuine smile and tried to lead their eyes and consulted various diagnostic apparati. I bore it as to go see my team now.” She turned and came back online.
Rick Kleffel of KUSP — a California NPR affiliate — has aired a great interview with me about the novel as well as a review, and they’re downloadable: Review (3.5MB MP3), Interview (5.3 MB RealAudio file)
I’m the Author of the Month at the excellent e-zine, Strange Horizons. They’ve published a review of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, a long interview that Katsi Macdonald (daughter of James D. Macdonald and Debra Doyle) conducted with me, and have reprinted my short story, Visit the Sins, which initially appeared in Asimov’s and was later reprinted in one of Hartwell’s Year’s Best anthologies.
Grampa was switched off when Sean found him on the ward, which throbbed with a coleslaw of laser-light and video games and fuck-pix and explosions and car wrecks and fractals and atrocities.
Sean remembered visits before the old man was committed, he and his dutiful father visiting the impeccable apartment in the slate house in Kingston, Ontario. Grampa made tea and conversation, both perfectly executed and without soul. It drove Sean’s father bugfuck, and he’d inevitably have a displaced tantrum at Sean in the car on the way home. The first time Grampa had switched on in Sean’s presence — it was when Sean was trying out a prototype of Enemies of Art against his father’s own As All Right-Thinking People Know — it had scared Sean stupid.
Grampa had been in maintenance mode, running through a series of isometric stretching exercises in one corner while Sean and his father had it out. Then, suddenly, Grampa was between them, arguing both sides with machinegun passion and lucidity, running an intellect so furious it appeared to be steam-driven. Sean’s tongue died in his mouth. He was made wordless by this vibrant, violent intellect that hid inside Grampa. Grampa and his father had traded extemporaneous barbs until Grampa abruptly switched back off during one of Sean’s father’s rebuttals, conceding the point in an unconvincing, mechanical tone. Sean’s father stalked out of the house and roared out of the driveway then, moving with such speed that if Sean hadn’t been right on his heels, he wouldn’t have been able to get in the car before his father took off.
