Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

by Cory Doctorow

I had previously read some of Cory Doctorow's short stories and blog posts (he runs BoingBoing.net), but I had never read any of his novels until now. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom first caught my attention when I read in an article that Doctorow released it online under a Creative Commons license. Since it was free to read and came in virtually every format imaginable, I thought I'd give it a read.

This was Doctorow's first novel, and to some extent it shows. It has that eager and imaginative feel I've seen in other out-of-the-gate sci-fi writers. My favorite thing about science fiction writing is the presentation of an Idea. A good sci-fi story or novel usually has one or two ideas or concepts about what the future or another existence could be like, and then it tells a story in that imagined environment. Doctorow's contribution to the sci-fi corpus is The Bitchun Society, his vision of a future in which technological innovations have conquered sickness, death, and information barriers. This would be fairly ho-hum techno-Marxism if it weren't for Doctorow's vision of what he calls "Whuffie," a constantly updated score of popularity/accomplishment/influence/power that each person carries. You gather Whuffie by creating things or working or helping people out, and you deplete your Whuffie when you use things or need people to help you. Also part of this vision of the future is what Doctorow calls the "ad-hocracy," the individual groups of people who informally get together to run a community or a university or a city. With the different ad-hocracies running the show, there isn't a need for a traditional government.

This hypothetical world view sets the stage for the exploits and struggles of the main character, Julius, who lives and works in the ad-hocracy that runs part of the Magic Kingdom at Disney World. Julius and his companions fight to preserve the traditional format of the Haunted Mansion as popular new-comers with lots of "Whuffie" try to change it to something like a virtual reality experience. If it sounds odd to create a sweeping vision of the future and then set a novel in Disney World, well, it is odd. The novel is entertaining for the most part, but not particularly strong. Several of the flashbacks seem intended just to develop Doctorow's idea of "The Bitchun Society" rather than to move along the story. By the end of the book, I didn't care much about the main character, which is always a problem. Still, it a was fairly entertaining read, even if the world view was more interesting than the plot.