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Cool ideas but I got bogged down with the preachy dialogue.
Sigh. The first Doctorow book I wanted to walkaway from.I love Doctorow. I fell in love with Makers and never looked back. So, after Pirate Cinema, I was waiting for something new, and this book read in the byline like a new Makers. I was elated. Sadly, it was not.The problem with this book was that it was just so sure of itself the whole time. The future was bleak, and rightfully so, but nothing felt tangible. The people were always spewing pages long rabble like a conversation between universi...
When I was 12 or 13, I stumbled upon anarcho-syndicalism of the Bookchin/Rocker variety and was convinced it was solely capable of saving the world. At age 16, I saw Kubrick's film adaptation of A Clockwork Orange and found myself adamantly rooting for the omnipotent state, since it appeared to be morally superior to the violent autonomous gang member Alex. If Cory Doctorow's unique novel Walkaway serves no other purpose, it can be an antidote or foil of sorts for Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork O...
So Walkaway is Cory Doctorow’s first adult novel since Makers, which came out eight years ago and has been hugely influential as a future scenario in some circles like the fab lab communities. I picked up Walkaway with high expectations to learn how Doctorow’s perspective on a possible future has evolved over the last years. I also always had tremendous respect for his non-fiction work and activism for privacy, copyright law, and open source. That leads me to my first huge problem with Walkaway:...
tl;dr - This was painful to read, the literary equivalent of shuffling through knee deep wet concrete. I kept expecting it to get better, it didn't.So, (he asked rhetorically), can William Gibson, Kim Stanley Robinson and Neal Stephenson all be wrong? Based upon the blurbs for this book, yup, yup, yup. Either that or they all read the super secret version that has not yet been released unto the eyes of the profane, since I honestly see no way they read this turkey. Characters randomly popped in
My Video Review:https://youtu.be/Y-xaRi_7x8EThere are some things I loved. There is tons of diversity with pan, bi, lesbian characters as well as POC characters. I liked the science and ideas of a possible future, but there were a fair amount of things I didn't.
I scored the USB audiobook edition at a book tour stop by the the author. Doctorow pimped it hard. In addition, its the first audiobook I've bought on a stick. I'm not disappointed.Firstly, this story is folk propaganda for an anarchist techno-utopia on the edge of the post-human singularity. Get that? To read this story, you have to have an ear for Media Lab speak . Its essential for understanding the zeitgeist of the future Doctorow is describing. Getting the author's Cliff Notes(tm) su...
Okay friends, if you like negative reviews then strap in because there aren’t many positive things I can say about this book. Walkaway was my first Doctorow book, and I don’t like to judge authors on just one book, but this wasn’t a good start for me. I like to start off reviews for books that I didn’t like with a positive from the book, but I really can’t think of one so here come the problems. But just as a warmup, an actual phrase from this novel to describe a character is “cute as a cute thi...
Did not finish. I hate not finishing books, but I just couldn't go on. 25% in and no story. Vague characters with no goals.What you DO get is a speculative techno-utopia in which it's just assumed you can obtain the raw materials to manufacture arbitrarily complex technology such as 3D printers, "wet printers", lasers, ATVs and exoskeletal suits, and mountains of computers. Rare earth metals, anyone? Maybe if he'd just invoked nanotech, I might have been like, "OK, fine, whatever."But the straw
“We’re not doing nations anymore. We’re doing people, doing stuff. Nations mean governments, passports, borders.” Kim Stanley Robinson meets Ursula K. LeGuin with vibrant page turning characters. Not a call to arms but a call to think - a new classic. Everyone should read Walkaway.
Just didnt connect with this one. Alot of conversations/ideas on I'm guessing the authors views on philosophy etc. Just wasnt for me
Wow! I admit I went in blind to this only know the title, the cover, and the fact that I've been a big fan of Cory Doctorow ever since Little Brother. I thought it was going to be something of a thriller with perhaps a political and especially an awesome technological bent to it.I didn't expect it to be this huge! The ideas in this novel can easily be ranked up with the very biggest novels of the last century.Let me explain: Walkaway as a term is nothing more than dropping out of the ranks of th...
Second read. Still just as hard to review and read, and still just as hard hitting as it was the first time around - this is an amazing book.This is a really hard book to review, but on the other hand - I loved it.It's not an easy book to read; I'm a reader who'll make her way through the average novel in half a day, and this took me a solid week. It's not a book you can skim or speed read through - every so often, in the middle of an escape or situating into a new moment, a character will begin...
Just WALK AWAY from this one. I got annoyed at it 1/3 of the way through and wrote an impassioned review, but decided I should wait to post until I finished the book. It did not improve, and I skimmed the remainder, getting more and more annoyed at Doctorow's flat and unsympathetic characters, habit of telling instead of showing, gratuitous sex, and lack of coherent plot/subject. If drastically edited (1/3 of its length?) with a coherent theme, this book could have been good. The worst sentence
I actually found this book a lot more enjoyable than expected, given that I'm not much of a sci-fi reader nor have I ever been to Burning Man (and have absolutely no intention to do so).
This is speculative fiction at its best--extrapolating our future from our present. At a time when the top 1% has narrowed to be the top 0.001% and technology has replaced nearly all workers, the surplus people walkaway to join others in the abandoned places who choose to live a different way. It is a choice that may cost them their lives.Doctorow is always hopeful, but never naive.
I was disappointed with WALKAWAY. There was some great 'world building' but I did not connect with the characters or their motivations. I liked the original premise but I found the story to be disjointed and the pacing confused me in a couple places.
That was the sort of social scifi I am often looking for. I thought this had a lot of great moments and hope, and maaaybe a bit too much melodrama. 3.5 rounded up because I would recommend it and will definitely seek out more by this author.CONTENT WARNINGS (just a list of topics): (view spoiler)[ torture, mutilation, medical experimentation, bombing civilians, child abuse, racism. (hide spoiler)]Things to love:-The cast. Delightfully varied and lovingly drawn. Yes, this checks pretty much all
Well, it starts off with promise, but kinda fizzles in the middle and finishes up in a disjointed way. Just kinda felt unfinished. On top of that much felt like artificially-forced political correctness - like it was trying too much to show a specifically idealized future.I think it would have been better if Doctorow hadn't tried so hard to make the ending something resembling 'happy'. It just didn't fit the rest of the book.Overall not bad, but not great.
This is not a “meh” 3.5 out of 5 stars. I was actually very engaged throughout this story and I can definitely see why Edward Snowden is a fan. It’s a mixed bag review. There’s some really great stuff in this book mixed with things that are distracting and don’t make sense. Let’s start with what this book does well. The walkaway culture is probably the most workable and realistic alternative to capitalism I’ve read in the sci-fi genre in a long time. Unlike Ursula Le Guin’s rigidly controlled so...