Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Walkaway: A Novel

Top positive review

5 people found this helpful

A fun and critical tale about the day after tomorrow.

ByNom, nom, nom de plumeon April 30, 2017

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.

Top critical review

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10 people found this helpful

A Philosophy Parable Bogged Down By Buzzwords

BySimStaron May 14, 2017

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.

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Showing 1-5 of 5 reviews(4 star, Verified Purchases). See all 28 reviews

Doctorow Revises his Future

ByDean ODonnellon May 22, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Current Doctorow seems to have an argument with Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom Doctorow, and actually puts all the arguments of the meritocracy he proposed in DOMK in the mouth of a guy who has a good heart but is kind of an jerk. For those of you who read and/or remember DOMK it's about the people who keep Disney World running because they love Disney World. More specifically there's an elaborate points system where people give each other points for doing cool things, and people with more points have more say in what to do next. This all sounded cool back in 2003 (when DOMK was published), before we had likes, social media, and gamification, and we realized it was a skinner box trap that would lead to the horrible dystopia of Black Mirror's "Nosedive" instead of Doctorow's meritocracy. Doctorow now seems to agree.

In Walkaway he tries to say that we live in an embarrassment of riches and that the 0.01% fool us into believing we need jobs and money to get stuff when if we just walk away and make things that are cool because they are cool, then we'll all have enough to eat, a place to live, and fulfilling activities to occupy our lives. Once you build something cool, someone is bound to want it, so you just walk away again and build something else. 3D printers are ubiquitous, as are plans for things to make because of the net (handwave). Of course, the 0.01% don't like people walking away, and paint them as terrorists, criminals, and all around bad people. Lots of walk away people die, but the others just keep walking away into harsher environments like a terribly contaminated asbestos and chemical spill site where the walkaways are printing their own space suits and practicing (kind of) to become Martians.

Oh, and the big breakthrough is that the walkaways discover how to record consciousness, effectively making people immortal as long as you have the server capacity and storage to run them. This pisses off the 0.01% to no end, because if that technology is available to everyone then they can't become immortal oligarchs ruling mankind forever.

Huge grains of salt are needed here, because Doctorow's people seem to be perfect communists, and I'm pretty sure those don't exist. Doctorow has substituted "people will do it because of points" with "people will do it because they'll see it's the right thing to do."

For all that he's writing about near-future dystopias, he's really an optimist.

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Must read for futurists!

ByAndrew & Jennon May 28, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

A very interesting look at a post-scarcity future. The story isn't fully refined, but still provides a strong narrative full of interesting concepts.

I highly recommend for futurist readers.

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Interesting

ByLuiz Marqueson May 3, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

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.

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Walkaway

ByRobin Shusteron May 9, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

A little Bit of Station Eleven, a little bit of Ursula LeGuin's Those who walk away from Omphalos. I enjoyed an optimistic dystopia although the end wrapped up a bit too neatly.