Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom — Cory Doctorow

Published a year after Altered Carbon this book takes a lot of the re-sleeving ideas from Richard’s book and instead of placing them into the realm of super warriors, criminals, etc.; Cory puts them into a future Disney Land theme park in an alternative dystopian future.

Having very much enjoyed Altered Carbon, i was left quite disappointed by the sequels, especially Woken Furies, and so it was rather nice to find a story like Cory’s that took some of the best ideas of Altered Carbon and spun them into a new Earth-side future that we can all begin to relate to because we’ve all heard of these real places.

No, this isn’t the blood and gore fest that Altered Carbon was, and neither does it have the amazing future-sex-drugs thing — they’re still smoking crack from crack pipes FFS.

But it does have the murder mystery and the loss of the intervening memories between back up and re-sleeving that Altered Carbon does, all wrapped around who gets to control various Disney Land attractions.

So yeah, if you’ve read any other Cory Doctorow books and enjoyed them then do give this a go, and also, if you enjoyed Altered Carbon, i’d bet a few pennies that you’ll enjoy this also, albeit a very much tamed down version.

There’s also a follow up novella: Truncat.

Cory’s Page

#scifi #cyberpunk #dystopian #corydoctorow