''Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom'' is a 2003

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

book, the first novel by Canadian author and digital-rights activist

Cory Doctorow Cory Efram Doctorow (; born July 17, 1971) is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who served as co-editor of the blog '' Boing Boing''. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of ...

. Concurrent with its publication by

Tor Books Tor Books is the primary imprint of Tor Publishing Group (previously Tom Doherty Associates), a publishing company based in New York City. It primarily publishes science fiction and fantasy titles, and is the largest publisher of Chinese sci ...

, Doctorow released the entire text of the novel under a Creative Commons noncommercial license on his website, allowing the whole text of the book to be freely read and distributed without needing any further permission from him or his publisher. The novel was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 2004.

Plot summary

This

future history A future history is a postulated history of the future and is used by authors of science fiction and other speculative fiction to construct a common background for fiction. Sometimes the author publishes a timeline of events in the history, whil ...

book takes place in the 22nd century, mostly in

Walt Disney World The Walt Disney World Resort, also called Walt Disney World or Disney World, is an entertainment resort complex in Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista, Florida, United States, near the cities of Orlando and Kissimmee. Opened on October 1, 1971, ...

. Disney World is run by rival adhocracies, each dedicated to providing the best experience to the park's visitors and competing for the Whuffie the guests offer. The story is told in first person by Julius, whose old college buddy Dan used to be one of the most popular people in the country (as measured by Whuffie). Julius and girlfriend Lil are working with the committee (called an ''

ad hoc Ad hoc is a Latin phrase meaning literally 'to this'. In English, it typically signifies a solution for a specific purpose, problem, or task rather than a generalized solution adaptable to collateral instances. (Compare with '' a priori''.) C ...

'') that oversees the

Magic Kingdom Magic Kingdom Park, previously known as Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom (1971–1994) and The Magic Kingdom (1994–2017), is a theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida, near Orlando, Florida. Owned and operated by The ...

's Liberty Square. Dan, who has hit rock bottom and lost all his Whuffie, doesn't believe in rejuvenation and wishes to die, but not while he's at rock bottom. He moves in with Julius and Lil in order to rebuild his life. At the park, Julius is murdered and soon refreshed. By the time he wakes up, Debra's ''ad hoc'' group has taken control of the Hall of Presidents, and is planning to replace its old-fashioned

animatronic Animatronics refers to mechatronic puppets. They are a modern variant of the automaton and are often used for the portrayal of characters in films and in theme park attractions. It is a multidisciplinary field integrating puppetry, anatomy a ...

robots with the synthetic memory imprinting of the experience of being the president for a moment. Julius believes that this rival committee had him killed as a distraction so that they could seize the Hall in the interim. Fearing that they will next try to revamp his favorite ride, the

Haunted Mansion The Haunted Mansion is a dark ride attraction located at Disneyland, Magic Kingdom, and Tokyo Disneyland. The haunted house attraction features a ride-through tour in Omnimover vehicles called "Doom Buggies", and a walk-through show is displa ...

, he resolves to take a stand against the virtualization of the park, endangering his relationship with both Lil and Dan; eventually Lil leaves Julius for Dan. Julius finally "cracks" when he sees his dreams turned to dust and he bashes up the attractions in the Hall of Presidents, in the process also damaging his own cranial interface to the point that he can no longer back himself up. This pushes his Whuffie to ground level when he is caught and gives Debra and her colleagues enough "sympathy Whuffie" to take over the Haunted Mansion, by invitation of the same fans that Julius had recruited to work in the Mansion. Dan leaves Lil, Julius is kicked out of the ''ad hoc'' and his Whuffie hits rock bottom — low enough that others take his possessions with impunity and elevators don't stop for him. Then comes the revelation: a few days before Dan's planned suicide by lethal injection, Dan reveals that it was in fact he who had arranged to kill Julius, in collusion with Debra, in exchange for the Whuffie that her team could give him. Dan had asked one of his converts from his missionary days, a young girl, to do the dirty work. Debra then had herself restored from a backup made before this plan, so that she would honestly believe that she wasn't involved. He makes this public; Debra is thrown out, Julius gets sympathy Whuffie and develops a friendly affection for his sweet young murderer. He never restores himself, because doing so would erase his memories of that entire year, his last with Dan, but lives with his damaged interface. The book is his attempt to manually document the happenings of the previous year so that, when this incarnation is eventually killed by age or accident, his restored backup will have a partial record of the transpiring events. Dan decides not to take a lethal injection, but to deadhead (putting oneself into a voluntary coma) till the

heat death of the Universe The heat death of the universe (also known as the Big Chill or Big Freeze) is a hypothesis on the ultimate fate of the universe, which suggests the universe will evolve to a state of no thermodynamic free energy, and will therefore be un ...

Characters

*Julius (also known as Jules), the narrator of the book, is more than a century old. His childhood dream is living at

Disney World The Walt Disney World Resort, also called Walt Disney World or Disney World, is an entertainment resort complex in Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista, Florida, United States, near the cities of Orlando and Kissimmee. Opened on October 1, 1971, th ...

(also known as "The Magic Kingdom"). *Lil, age 23, with long red hair and freckles, is Jules' girlfriend. She is 15 percent of Jules' age, but outwardly the same age. She was raised in Walt Disney World. *Dan is Jules' best male friend. He is a former missionary for the Bitchun utopia who has lost the will to live now that there are no technophobes left to convert. *Debra is one of the old guard of Disney World and was a comrade of Lil's parents before they went deadhead. She spent a decade in Disneyland Beijing, coding sim-rides. *Tim is a programmer of synthetic memories. *Tom and Rita are Lil's parents who were "members of the original ''ad hoc'' that had seized power in Walt Disney World, wresting control from a gang of wealthy former shareholders who had been operating it as their private preserve". *Zed (also known as Zoya) is a

transhuman Transhuman, or trans-human, is the concept of an intermediary form between human and posthuman. In other words, a transhuman is a being that resembles a human in most respects but who has powers and abilities beyond those of standard humans. Th ...

who was married to Julius for 18 months, went crazy, and reverted to a backup from before she met Julius.

Cultural cross references

* Chapter five includes a description of a "Snow Crash Spectacular parade" based on Neal Stephenson's book ''

Snow Crash ''Snow Crash'' is a science fiction novel by the American writer Neal Stephenson, published in 1992. Like many of Stephenson's novels, it covers history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, cryptography ...

''. * The book contains references to the Beatles song "

Rocky Raccoon "Rocky Raccoon" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1968 double album ''The Beatles'' (also known as the "White Album"). It was primarily written by Paul McCartney, although credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. M ...

". Julius' girlfriend leaves him for his friend Dan, just as Lil leaves Rocky Raccoon for a man named Dan in the song. At the beginning of the book, Jules and Lil sing some lyrics from the song. *"Rangy Lil" is a character from the science fiction classic "Time Enough for Love" by Robert Heinlein. The character Dan in this book says: "Lil, you are one rangy cowgirl." * Doctorow's short stor
"Truncat"
is also set in the Bitchun Society, sometime after the events of ''Down and Out''. * Doctorow's short story "I, Row Boat", a play on words of Isaac Asimov's ''

I, Robot ''I, Robot'' is a fixup (compilation) novel of science fiction short stories or essays by American writer Isaac Asimov. The stories originally appeared in the American magazines ''Super Science Stories'' and '' Astounding Science Fiction'' be ...

'', also appears to be set in the same universe (though more distantly future), with references to artificial uploading and downloading of intelligence, but no explicit mention of the Bitchun Society or Whuffie. * The title is a reference to George Orwell's ''

Down and Out in Paris and London ''Down and Out in Paris and London'' is the first full-length work by the English author George Orwell, published in 1933. It is a memoir in two parts on the theme of poverty in the two cities. Its target audience was the middle- and upper-cl ...

''.

Licensing

On February 12, 2004, Doctorow re-licensed his book under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike (by-nc-sa) license. Under the new license, one can now make derivative works from the book without permission, provided the license and attribution is retained with each new work and the derivatives are not used commercially. Already, fans of the book have begun Russian and Spanish translations, an audio book version, and several amusing re-arrangements of the text. Doctorow has noted that he is pleased that people are building on his work, and that he hopes that further innovations will follow. Despite these measures, in 2007 invalid

DMCA The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or ...

takedown notices were sent by Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) with regard to this novel.Cory Doctorow
Science Fiction Writers of America abuses the DMCA
August 30, 2007, boingboing

said "''Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom'' was the first novel released under a Creative Commons license, and I've spent the past four years exhorting fans to copy my work and share it. Now I've started to hear from readers who've seen this notice and concluded that I am a hypocrite who uses SFWA to send out legal threats to people who heeded my exhortation."Arstechnica
article ''Worse than Vogon poetry: bogus DMCA takedowns stun sci-fi lovers'' published August 31, 2007

References

External links