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Walkaway Paperback

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[Read by Amber Benson, Gabrielle de Cuir, Justine Eyre, Amanda Palmer, Lisa Renee Pitts, Will Wheaton, Mirron Willis]

Cory Doctorow's first adult novel in eight years is an epic tale of revolution, love, post-scarcity, and the end of death.

Hubert Vernon Rudolph Clayton Irving Wilson Alva Anton Jeff Harley Timothy Curtis Cleveland Cecil Ollie Edmund Eli Wiley Marvin Ellis Espinoza -- known to his friends as Hubert, Etc -- was too old to be at that Communist party.

But after watching the breakdown of modern society, he really has no where left to be -- except among the dregs of disaffected youth who party all night and heap scorn on the sheep they see on the morning commute. Falling in with Natalie, an ultrarich heiress trying to escape the clutches of her repressive father, the two decide to give up fully on formal society -- and walk away.

After all, now that anyone can design and print the basic necessities of life -- food, clothing, shelter -- from a computer, there seems to be little reason to toil within the system.

It's still a dangerous world out there, the empty lands wrecked by climate change, dead cities hollowed out by industrial flight, shadows hiding predators, animal and human alike. Still, when the initial pioneer walkaways flourish, more people join them. Then the walkaways discover the one thing the ultrarich have never been able to buy: how to beat death. Now it's war, a war that will turn the world upside down.

Fascinating, moving, and darkly humorous, Walkaway is a multi-generational SF thriller about the wrenching changes of the next hundred years -- and the very human people who will live their consequences.

--This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

--This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Walkaway

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Editorial Reviews

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''Is Doctorow's fictional utopia bravely idealistic or bitterly ironic? The answer is in our own hands. A dystopian future is in no way inevitable; Walkaway reminds us that the world we choose to build is the one we'll inhabit. Technology empowers both the powerful and the powerless, and if we want a world with more liberty and less control, we're going to have to fight for it.'' --Edward Snowden

''The darker the hour, the better the moment for a rigorously-imagined utopian fiction. Walkaway is now the best contemporary example I know of, its utopia glimpsed after fascinatingly-extrapolated revolutionary struggle. A wonderful novel: everything we've come to expect from Cory Doctorow and more.''--William Gibson

''Cory Doctorow has authored the Bhagavad Gita of hacker/maker/burner/open source/git/gnu/wiki/99%/adjunctfaculty/Anonymous/shareware/thingiverse/cypherpunk/LGTBQIA*/squatter/upcycling culture and zipped it down into a pretty damned tight techno-thriller with a lot of sex in it.''--Neal Stephenson

''Cory Doctorow is one of our most important science fiction writers, because he's also a public intellectual in the old style: he brings the news and explains it, making clearer the confusions of our wild current moment. His fiction is always the heart of his work, and this is his best book yet, describing vividly the revolutionary beginnings of a new way of being. In a world full of easy dystopias, he writes the hard utopia, and what do you know, his utopia is both more thought-provoking and more fun.'' --Kim Stanley Robinson --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

About the Author

Cory Doctorow is a blogger, journalist, and author of nonfiction and award-winning science fiction. His science fiction has won numerous awards, and his young-adult novel Little Brother spent seven weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. He is a contributing author to Wired magazine, and his writing has been published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, the Globe and Mail, the Boston Globe, Popular Science, and others. He is coeditor of the blog Boing Boing, and he was named one of the web's twenty-five ''influencers'' by Forbes and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. His novels have earned such awards as the Prometheus Award, the 2000 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, Locus Award for Best First Novel, Sunburst Award, White Pine Award, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He has served as Canadian regional director of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles.

--This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

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Product details

Paperback
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1786693062
ISBN-13: 978-1786693068
Product Dimensions: 9 x 1.5 x 5.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #120,502 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars

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2 star		11%
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Top Customer Reviews

A fun and critical tale about the day after tomorrow.

ByNom, nom, nom de plumeon April 30, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

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.

0Comment 5 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Doctrow's Amazing World Building: An Intrepid Walk into a Familiar World

BysTardison May 8, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

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.

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A Philosophy Parable Bogged Down By Buzzwords

BySimStaron May 14, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

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.