eveninghawk’s links

I have the utmost respect for Cory Doctorow and his web presence. He is one of the folks involved in boing boing. He has two novels out and a collection of short stories, all of which you can find at craphound.com. His style is very easy to read, and the content reminded me how much I like spec fic, which I haven’t read since my college days really. Neil Gaiman’s writing is much more fantastical, and aside from Gaiman’s writing and that of Patricia McKillip, I haven’t read much sci-fi/fantasy anything since 2001.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is only enhanced by its references. Disneyworld does, in fact, hold some of my most vivid childhood memories. It is what the park is designed to do. This future-view of the park and the world is great, and serves for a great read. I read the online edition of the book, since it’s accessible for me here in China. I am curious if any of the sci-fi organizations here have gotten their hands on translating the book. I think many of the aspects of Disneyworld would provide a challenge, since the park and its pieces not a societal known here. It would take a bit of explaining to get across the idea of Tomorrowland etc. In fact, I think this is part of the reason folks in China couldn’t quite decide what to make of Pirates of the Caribbean. My experience with the movie was greatly influenced by my memory and love of the ride.

Doctorow knows his stuff about the park, which is refreshing to me. O’Reilly has a neat interview with the writer posted, which may be a good read before or after reading the book. The part about this book that attracted me was the idea of whuffie, a social esteem tabulation that serves as currency. In a world where there is no shortage of anything except space, and death has a cure, money doesn’t work the same either. Essentially, think of social standing and financial power dictated by google rank, and you have the right idea.

The book makes use of a Creative Commons licence, and that is another neat factor for me. I am interested that Doctorow was able to convince his publication folks that this was a good idea. There has been an addition to this discussion in a speech called Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books released to the Public Domain. It’s all worth the read, and I am certainly looking forward to reading the next novel Eastern Standard Tribe.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 13th, 2004 at 9:22 pm and is filed under books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.