Walkaway

A Novel

384 pages

English language

Published June 17, 2017 by Tor Books.

ISBN:
978-0-7653-9276-3
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4 stars (3 reviews)

Walkaway is a 2017 science fiction novel by Cory Doctorow, published by Head of Zeus and Tor Books. Set in our near-future, it is a story of walking away from "non-work", and surveillance and control by a brutal, immensely rich oligarchical elite; love and romance; a post-scarcity gift economy; revolution and eventual war; and a means of finally ending death.

6 editions

Great ideas, not so great story

4 stars

Started out great, engaging with big ideas. Very relevant topics were raised and weaved into a futuristic world - technology, unemployment, greed, capitalism, meritocricity, abundance, diversity, post-humanism. However, it got harder to read somewhere along the way. The plot was poor and the storytelling disjointed and longwinded, with too much going on. I also couldn't really identify with any of the characters.

A vindicating romp for faraday-cage-wallet-toting, gait-altering, cyanogenmod-installing, cypherpunk githubbers everywhere

5 stars

Walkaway by @pluralistic@mamot.fr has been described as a utopian novel in a sea of dystopian alternatives, although I'd say it's actually both utopian and dystopian. It takes place in the 'middle distance' of the future; cars are still a thing, and they have wheels that roll on the ground, space travel isn't really a thing yet - humankind is essentially still bound to the Earth. But number of current-day issues have reached their logical culmination; from mundane technology (drones everywhere, 'interface surfaces' stuck to things instead of touch-screen smartphones, 3D printer 'fabs' are ubiquitous, capable of printing machines, clothing, and food) to the Big Issues of our time: Social inequality is extreme, with the overwhelming majority of the populous trapped in a struggling middle-class of insecure wage slaves, ruled by a tiny over-class of 'zottas', the hyper-rich owners of everything, from real estate, through business and roboticized industry, to intellectual …