Walkaway: A Novel Kindle Edition

This is the kind of fiction I have come to expect from Cory Doctorow. But that is not a bad thing. It's good to read a fun adventure that's politically aware that has some elements to make almost everyone a little uncomfortable at points.

Although it makes no obvious reference to Diogenes (the Cynic), some of the actions and beliefs of the protagonists are clearly aligned with his ideas, and it does a lovely job of depicting the beauty in those ideas.

Meh.

Good points:
• It is not a dystopia. It is not a utopia. It is two, two topias in one!
• No nanites. Thank god!
• Final third of the novel
• Walkaways are a new and interesting character class
• For Doctrow fans (like me) it is fun to see him idea-check previous short stories and novels
• I got 27 new business ideas

Bad Points
• The text is primarily a delivery system for buzzwords, soon-to-be-buzzwords, and totally invented buzzwords. They come so fast, furious, and unrelenting, that the novel should be stamped with a motion sickness warning (I was frequently a little nauseous). What he lacks in quality, he makes up in quantity.
• The first 2/3 of the novel. No excitement and none of the characters wormed their way in.
• 3D printers take on some of the magical role usually reserved for nanites.
• Instead of evil military commanders with one dimension, we get evil capitalists with one dimension.

For me, Walkaway was a cross between a chat channel for Anonymous, where the cool kids invent slang to keep the noobs guessing, and a philosophy textbook. In fact, if it is any one thing, it is a philosophy parable. See the Capitalists? Bad Capitalists. Morally bankrupt Capitalists. See the people who just want to share? Good Abundance people. Morally evolved Abundance people.

For me, Walkaway was better than The Rapture of the Nerds but not as good as Makers.

The book is interesting in the way many parts are in two sides at once. The whole plot is a dystopia (the default) and an utopia (the walkways). The society seems real and totally made up at the same time, and so does the tech.

It also feels a bit as propaganda against capitalism in many ways, and I'm not sure at all that the pure gift economy could work. Feels like the carefully calculated one with scores that Charles Stross proposed on some of his older novels would be much more likely to work.

Still, as most Doctorow novels, it is very unusual and well worth reading.

I highly recommend Cory Doctrow's novel, Walkaway. Yes, the characters in Walkaway are not deeply developed. And, yes, jargon and slang infiltrates the dialogue like kudzu unfurling in a temperate forest baked by climate-change. However, Doctrow's amazingly successful world building made it easy for me to get past those issues. This novel is a member of a rare species, a Must Read that is also fun to read.

The world that Doctrow creates in Walkaway is one of the most difficult to pull off, I think. It is a world very close in time to our own, and very like our own. The science and technology we read about is not unobtainable, and although the airships used by Walkaways to flyaway bring Steampunk to mind, this is not a Steampunk world. Socially and economically, the world in Walkaway follows paths already in place in "our" world.

There is much commentary in Walkaway, on topics ranging from political to economic to social. The commentary is primary embedded in character dialogue, and that approach works about 85% of the time. Admittedly, there are points when spoken ideologic observations work against the development of an character into someone we can believe in and care about. In my opinion, this drawback does not affect the overall success of the novel.

Of course it is difficult to write about the conversations that occur in Walkaway without treading into Spoiler Territory. However, I think most readers will find that novel contains thoughtful observations that go beyond, and push the reader to think beyond, introductory level concepts. For example, (and this will not be a spoiler), when a member of the 1% and a Walkaway debate the value of charitable non-profit foundations set up by the wealthy... the usual glowing accolades accorded to selfless wealthy individuals who "give away" so much money are refuted by the Walkaway. These foundations are not created out of the goodness of your heart, she asserts. They are created so the rich, like you, can stay in control of where their money goes, running the world like it is another of their private cooperations. Expressing this viewpoint, I think, calls for a certain fearlessness. Walkaway contains the fearless expression of many such observations.

Of note, I admit to being inclined personally toward a "Bernie" viewpoint, and lean far away from Trump's ideology. So I embraced most of the observations and comments I read in Walkaway. However, readers with different viewpoints may well react to the novel with less delight than I did. I hope, however, that the majority of readers will take on, and finish the novel, even if the urge strikes to walk away.

Cory Doctorow yet again proves an inspiration to Resistors everywhere. Walkaway throws magical new ideas of what the future can be like, if only we are willing to take that leap of faith. It's going to be a tough road, but we can do it.

My certain Hugo nominee. In a post scarcity world, how do we build a post scarcity society? If this book is a guide, we walk away into the first days of a better humanity.

Doctorow fast forwards our present, extrapolating to what seems like a highly likely version of the future. The underlying but never subtle messages contained in this and his other books continually give me pause and force me to reflect on the socio economic structures that we let bind our lives.
Not a book to pick up lightly it contains profound and life changing concepts. Make sure you are prepared for that.

Walkaway embiggens the smallest reader. It looks at our future, with the same sort of hopefulness as Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek.

Also, get the audiobook, the narration makes it totally worth it.