Tag: Cory Doctorow

NEWS REVIEW 1.2

books in spaceCyberspace is filled with plenty of things for book lovers. Every Sunday I will share some of the best things I have found. Just click the links to be swept away, but please remember to come back.

Cory Doctorow is leading the fight to have digital locks removed from ebooks and other material that you own.

To lead the fight, the EFF has brought in Cory Doctorow, celebrated author, co-founder of blog institution Boing Boing, and originator of “Doctorow’s Law”, which sums up the dilemma neatly: “Any time someone puts a lock on something you own, against your wishes, and doesn’t give you the key, they’re not doing it for your benefit.” For Doctorow, and for many others, computers should exist to do what we tell them to do: “It’s the difference between ‘Yes, master’ and ‘I can’t let you do that, Dave’.”

Read the full article, Whose digital content is it anyway? on the Guardian website

Wednesday night I was travelling home on the tube and I found a book, lovingly placed there by the good people at Books On The Underground. It is a wonderful idea, which I believe has made it Stateside to NYC as well. Besides giving away free books, Books on the Underground also have a wonderful blog with some reviews, a book club and plenty of information about this wonderful organisation.

Visit Books on the Underground’s blog

I tweet, so I perhaps should read So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson.
If you tweet, maybe you should too.

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson, book review: You are what you tweet from The Independent

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I worked in a magical kingdom in Florida. It was filled with many wonderful characters who spent the nights drinking and partying and the days fulfilling people’s wishes… Even if that wish was to find the nearest toilets.

It was a wonderful experience working at Walt Disney World, so wonderful in fact that I even brought a wife home as a souvenir, or should I say she brought me home, as it was her that brought me to England. Still it wasn’t so wonderful that I would have wanted to spend the rest of eternity living and working in ‘the happiest place on Earth’. Which is exactly the premise of Cory Doctorow‘s book, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.

Cover of

Set in the future, death has been eliminated as one of life’s worries. If you get sick, injured or even killed than the Bitchun Society will just create a clone of you and implant your new brain with all the information backed-up from your old one, so you will theoretically live forever. Which is exactly the situation of Down and Out’s protagonist Julian, who has worked in the Haunted Mansion at Disney World for centuries. Not a bad concept for a novel, but a concept doesn’t always make for a good story.

Littered with jargon that is never is explained, and plagued by a storyline that loses its way occasionally, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is a novel of high concepts but mediocre quality. Perhaps because it is so short (208 pages), or because it  was the author’s first novel, the story feels rushed. The characters also, with the exception of the main character Julian, are never given the time to fully develop, and some of them remain lifeless, like the clones they are. Of course, any science-fiction fan, or Disney Castmember Alumni (like myself) can forgive the shortcomings of this novel, because the ride was a fun one, even if I was slightly confused some of the time.

***

Second Opinion

About the Author

Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger — the co-editor of Boing Boing (boingboing.net) and the author of young adult novels like HOMELAND, PIRATE CINEMA and LITTLE BROTHER and novels for adults like RAPTURE OF THE NERDS and MAKERS. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada,he now lives in London.

Borrowed from Craphound.com
Related articles