Walkaway: A Novel

The repeatedly shoehorned in SJW pablum DESTROYED the flow of the narrative, and often also burned the point of each passage they were in. These passages are OBVIOUSLY written in AFTER the book is finished, and by another writer.

Basically: the editor's blatant brainless political masturbating ruined this book.

Grim and disappointing. This was the first book I couldn't finish in years. After 60% of mostly LGBTQIAPK romance (with one straight character!), I was exhausted. Skipped to the last few pages, and found I'd missed nothing except my $14. Ouch!
Factually distorts social principles like "tragedy of the commons" (where Doctorow conveniently substitutes the pilgrim's original 1623 solution of dividing ownership among families with the feudal system they left Europe to escape!). The antagonists of this book are wealthy dysfunctional families, but there are no normal families. Just weird!

In the near future every everyone worth their salt is a closeted homosexual/transexual/communist......OK... So many interesting ideas wrapped up in a PC turd capsule. Pathetic. The idea that a poorly made copy of one's brains will make people into better suicide bombers against the capitalist state? Again, an interesting idea that 2 seconds of thought will vaporize. Could someone please write an SF book that does not act as is the entire human population is just waiting to go all super homo at the drop of a hat? Could someone please act as if sexual dimorphism and the continuation of the human race is something other than a transitory passing fancy? Because, otherwise, this book is simply too stupid to further consider.

This in no way reflects upon the seller, but upon the book itself...
It is pro communism and anti capitalism. Karl Marx gets lifted up while taking a giant dump on Plato, most specifically Plato's Republic.
Communism has been directly responsible for HUNDREDS of millions of souls being killed, murdered, or simply starving to death. It astonishes me how such a failed concept keeps getting plugged with each generation of know-nothing "intellectuals." Just because you can speak or write eloquently doesn't mean you are qualified to rip an economic system that has done more to lift the most human beings up out of poverty than any other in the history of history! Capitalism is what rules every human interaction whether we admit it or not. I create something with value, and sell it to you for a price. Trade me some seeds for it, or we'll agree to swapping our time to help each other get our woodpiles chopped, or whatever. The easiest method is simply to trade MONEY for the thing of value you want or need.

But this book has as its basic theme the "Post Scarcity" utopia. A Marxist concept. Sorry, like it or not, but we exist in a meritocracy. And rightly so! When I was coming up as an electrical apprentice I had to EARN my respect as I acquired new knowledge and experience. You want the best doctor, you want the best nurse, you want a mechanic to work on your car who actually knows what he (or she) is doing, right?? Well, you don't get to that level unless you first lay the foundation of hard work, study, and good workmanship in whatever best practices you apply to whatever job you do.

Seniority is an actual thing. We look up to experienced people as leaders in their fields for a reason: it's logical and wise.

Sorry, although I finished reading this book (and it was a struggle, believe me) I must admit my brain hates my own eyes for doing it. Thank God I learned about the really real world, the one that works based on merit earned from experience. This utopia stuff is just hokum, a pipe dream for the ignorant youth to glom onto because it "seems" nice. I shall not be reading any more of this author's work in the future. My set of beliefs are based on individual liberty, capitalism (no, not "crony" capitalism), and the fact every person is entitled to 100% of whatever they build, create, and earn.

Cory Doctorow has a brilliant and insightful view of the future. His new novel Walkaway echos some of the themes from his prior novels--maker culture, wide-spread net technology and accompanying surveillance, growing disparities between cultural strata--while creating a future history that might be believable.

In this near-future North America, many people have chosen to become walkaways, turning their backs on default society, living in open and deserted land, creating communal living communities. It's a culture of abundance, where needs can be met by manufacturing plants and 3D printers fed by scavenged raw materials. The economy of the walkaways relies on gifts, plenty, and voluntary participation.

Doctorow makes some interesting economic and philosophical points about capitalism, meritocracy, and society. When the daughter of a very wealthy family decides to walkaway and embraces the walkaway culture, the flip sides of society come into contact and inevitable conflict. Their family squabble becomes emblematic of and central to a larger global conflict.

With Doctorow's style and thoughtfulness, there was enough in Walkaway to keep me interested and reading. But overall, I didn't love the story. The motives and actions of the big war against the walkaways were not compelling to me. The manufacturing tech was contrived. The explicit sex scenes were gratuitous and did not add to the story. The homosexual coupling and transgenderism seemed out of place, a blatant attempt to push a cultural agenda.

Walkaway is not Doctorow's worst book, but, unlike some of his other fiction, it's not one I think I'd like to read again.

We listened to the audio version of this book while on a road trip and thought it very enjoyable. The audiobook has a good cast of readers. Yes some of the sci-fi stuff is not believable, and there are some characters that don't always make sense, but much of the futuristic tech in the book is simply a logical extension of what we already have today and was quite realistic I thought. The book has a definite point of view, mainly that the model of co-operation and sharing is better than than capitalistic exploitation and extreme inequality. So, folks that are hard-core neoliberals or conservatives who believe that "the markets" can and should decide the future course of humanity, will not like this book. Some reviews have ranted about "communism", etc. For me the book is somewhat ideological, but it's more about valuing human life over money and power.

Doctorow posits a society in the future where a tiny amount of people own nearly everything (“Zottas”). Some folks decide to Walkaway. Living on the fringes of society, they use automation, including various kinds of instant manufacturing to provide for all their needs. Instead of any sort of market, they work at what they like, freely giving their labor and genius.

The novel details the adventures of three young people, and their adventures when they walk away. The first half of the novel showing how the system worked was the most interesting. The latter half detailed the conflict between the zottas and the walkaways. The walkaways also invent a way to upload your consciousness to a computer, which largely figures in the latter half of the book. Since I don’t believe we’ll never upload our consciousness to a computer, that subplot rang hollow for me.

The book is slowed by scenes of bathing, drug use and sex. I didn’t think the economic system was workable at all. Even the main Walkaway Lenin figure had to carefully school herself not to think about how she had put orders of magnitude more work into her enclave. What of the others not so advanced? Instead of money or property rights, walkaways used shunning, shaming and “revert wars”. If they didn’t like what you did, they’d come around and undo it. You’d do it again and they’d revert it. On and on until one side got tired. I think most places would settle on some sort of currency to regulate such things (and the author does admit such places exist, but of course they aren’t as nice as pure Walkaway.)

The walkaways aren’t any better morally. They capture some mercs that stumble across their bat cave. Some of the walkaways decide the mercs must be forcibly uploaded- although no one knows how to wake them back up. Characters actually exclaim how impossible it would be to keep them prisoner. This made no sense. They could weld up a prison, leaving food, water and a chemical toilet. Cameras could monitor the prisoners. They knew they had to evacuate, so a day or so after they left they could remotely alert the world to the mercs' location. I figured this out in like five minutes, but no one in the novel could.

There is some interesting commentary about coming automation causing so many to lose their jobs, but the book was not enjoyable.

This idealistic manifesto provides some fascinating points, though the world that had to be created to make it possible is quite a stretch. In a future Canada full of available land where industry crumbled, yet still sustaining rich cities of people printing their food and goods, a percentage of people feel the need to get out of the materialism and go in the wilderness. Despite rumored ruthlessness, the area here is mostly utopian, with everyone doing their share or leaving. People have or can easily make anything they need, they just need to forage some feedstock and code some instructions.
It's a bit like the Internet, so it's the perfect place to make it possible to transfer your personality to the cloud, and deadhead your body. You can even have multiple versions of yourself, as long as you can regulate your moods so the fact of being a computerization doesn't drive you crazy (crash).
The idea of imagining such a world and how it would interact with ones like ours, including the mercenaries who can navigate both, is fascinating, as are the cyberpunk descriptions of the technology.

Reading the reviews (5 stars to 1 star) on "Walkaway" is as much fun as reading the book. I LOVE the idea of Walkaways. Sign me up! Obviously, this book appeals to a certain type of reader. I'm that type of reader. The political/philosophical bent aside, it was difficult at first to learn the lingo, but once I settled into the strange vocabulary, I liked it. Interestingly, Doctorow left much of the slang we use today. At times I thought some of the characters sounded the same, but they led very different lives, so they were easy enough to distinguish. Overall, I enjoyed this adventure. It stretched my mind when thinking about technology. Also, it was validating to meet characters that feel cooperation can overcome competition.

The first thing about Walkaway that you may notice is the name of main character. It’s (and I’m not kidding): Hubert Vernon Rudolph Clayton Irving Wilson Alva Anton Jeff Harley Timothy Curtis Cleveland Cecil Ollie Edmund Eli Wiley Marvin Ellis Espinoza. Mates renamed him to Hubert, Etc.
This is just the beginning of this fascinating story, as it weaves its way through a century, showing the changes to society and how humans suffer through them and those consequences.
It is moving, dark, funny, but also scary. There is an underlying realism in Mr. Doctorow’s novel that adds another layer to it. This is where the novel succeeds in being more than just an SF thriller, but also a statement of where we might go, if we do not take care now.

I got sucked in by the first couple chapters, where the ideas and the characters seemed equally engaging. But it devolved quickly, and by 2/3 in, I was reading just to finish and find out how it ended.

I think it came off as an odd kind of burner/occupy prepper fantasy, where even the token aggressive walkaway jerk quotes Plato in his arguments. Can you create an abundant utopian future with average people, or must power transfer from one elite group to to another elite group?

I don't think the book deals with that question, nor does it really satisfy as a novel, but I give full marks for a creative imagining of how near-future tech will continue to disrupt entrenched powers.

As usual Doctorow makes you think. This novel deals with a world where the division between the have and have nots has become insurmountable. It really had a very slow start though. The characters seemed whiney and aimless. The plot seemed to have little direction. This changed a little over halfway through the book when the pieces all began to fit togther. At this point the book began to become recognizable as a Doctorow book making political commentary and making the reader think. Best advice is do not give up on this book.

There was a time when science fiction writers told stories of a future world that strained one’s willing suspension of disbelief to the outer limits of plausibility. Today, some writers of science fiction describe a near future that seems to be just a few short choices away from our current society. Cory Doctorow leads readers into his story of the breakdown of civil order titled, Walkaway, as a logical consequence of growing inequality. I assume Doctorow wants to get readers thinking about the consequences of our current trajectory, consider what could be next, and then engage with others on making improved choices to build a better society.

Rating: Five-star (I love it)

Thoroughly enjoyed the audio book. Very insightful commentary on our current society and where it (sadly) could very easily head. I don't want to give anything away but the concept of "walkaway" is a very interesting to solution to capitalism, materialism, corruption, selfishness, etc. Most certainly worth a read or listen.

Also, really enjoyed all the pop geek culture thrown in. All in all, a fun book with deep, intellectual roots. Also really important, the book does not take itself too seriously, which can be seen by said geek culture and copious F-bombs. Again, def worth a read/listen.

This was definitely an interesting read. Complex and intriguing analysis of the human condition (anthropologically, psychologically and sociologically) wrapped in a sci-fi novel. At times maybe a bit preachy and overly idealistic but also scarily realistic (it’s quite likely that is exactly where we are headed...)

Walkaway by Cory Doctorow is a rollicking adventure through a future of technological abundance and economic inequality where eccentric billionaires invest in radical life extension and hackers advance toward uploading human minds. People struggling to survive on the fringes of a broken system set out to construct a new society from scratch and struggle with the social implications of technological change every step of the way. Doctorow navigates a truly zany number of big, important, challenging ideas with apparent ease.

The least believable aspect of this novel, for me, was the idea that all of the raw material needed to fabricate *anything* was salvaged. I get it that much of the food was recycled by technological developments, quasi-plausible in a suspend-your-disbelief kind of way, but for the electronics and other hardware, I just really can't stretch that far. Everything is conveniently abandoned? How magical is that?
So, all of the raw material for pretty much everything in walkaway-land is stolen.
Also, it's nice to imagine enjoying the onsen and eating lovely fabbed food from the B&B, but who cleans up? Meaning, I find it hard to believe that enough people are givers and not just takers. We can just write some code and let the machines do all the dirty work, right? They talk about it but it doesn't resonate.
Too bad IceWeasel didn't think to use her fortune to buy a big chunk of land and set some capital aside for purchasing raw material to give to anyone who needed it *before* she got kidnapped and had to spend all of that money to buy her freedom.
Very glad to be finished with the book (stuck through til the end even though I didn't enjoy it); will not be recommending this one.

I tremendously enjoyed this brilliant look at our future--a time when technology offers the possibility of a post-property world. Doctorow imagines it with density and richness and heart. I also liked the egalitarian vibe of most of the characters in the new society. They make up a self-correcting culture in which peer pressure helps to hold waverers to a higher standard of tolerance and acceptance. This seems a natural extrapolation of the way young people these days are far more accepting of differences than they were in previous generations. The sociology is almost as impressive as the technology the author imagines. The idea that a Utopia would have to be born out of violence from those who hold the money and the power is one of the most compelling aspects of this book. And rather than keeping that an abstract concept, the author personalizes it in the characters. The central concept is the Walkaway--the idea that since technology can provide us with all we need to survive, we don't need to subject ourselves to the work economy, or even the economy of plenty. We can, if we choose, simply walk away. (That's what "John Galt" encouraged his cohort to do, but for entirely opposite reasons!) A wonderful, hope-filled book despite the brutal conflict that arises from the passing of the torch from rampant Capitalism to the next phase, when nobody even needs to work to survive.

A great science fiction read, with many political discussions about the future of mankind. Some terrific ideas expounded upon, with hope that we could be greater than we are, if we can get wiser in time. Good possibilities, and much to think about. Enjoyable ways of extending our capabilities are explained enough to grasp, along with the computer lingo. A meaningful book that can be read as "just" a novel, or can be a teaching tool.

It's an interesting concept - what happens to society when scarcity is cured by easy 3D printing of everything - but incredibly poorly executed. The characters were one-dimensional and showed no growth or development. The sex scenes seemed written by a pre-teen and tacked on without moving the plot forward. The antagonists lacked any discernable motivation and apparently are bad just because they have money. The pages drip with technical jargon that the author just assumes the reader understands and which isn't needed for the plot or characters. I'd love to see someone else take a stab at the basic concept behind the story (the only reason I didn't give this one star) but save your money.

(Spoiler follows). The dystopian premise is based on the concept of abundance, and "hackable" IP. That is difficult to accept, but the immortality resolution makes the work fantasy rather than fiction

Forget cyberpunk and steampunk, Doctorow creates a new genre, dev-opsecpunk, spinning up a world where people fed up with the scarcity power play literally walkaway to create an abundant world from the leftovers, unwanted and over-resourced. Technology to manufacture nearly anything creates the latitude for such a leap and if the Default world could stand it, things just might work out. Inside is the story of pioneers inventing the "first days of a better nation"—rich characters—who capture your inner dissatisfaction, pull you into their world and make you believe in the human spirit. Walkaway doesn't feel like a distant future, but a struggle we are perhaps engaged in already, offering a prescient road map to modern utopia, or perhaps more pragmatically, a hopeful dystopia.

I read several reviews of this book that raved about it, and it shows up on lots of "best sci fi" lists, so I thought it would be a surefire winner, but I didn't like it. I made it a third of the way through and kept finding myself putting it down in boredom. It was an interesting sociopolitical premise, but not my cup of tea for actual reading, so I finally gave up.

A lot of good political and economic ideas reflected in a society of money and power. Add some romance and sex with electro mechanical immortality and you have a page turner. I liked the people and the plots and wished it could have been a bit more condensed.

Its been years since my last DNF.
I struggled through half but just couldn't go on for i feared the evil and the darkness of this journey.
This book was a bloated, pretentious, bougie, communist manifesto.
The gods willing i will find the strength to complete my sojourn at a later time.

Try Mind Storm by KM Ruiz a well written dystopian world ruled by the 1%ers

Walkaway grabbed me from the first page, and I finished it in one long evening. Doctorow creates a very plausible near future, and fills it with a variety of fully developed characters. Exploring the consequences of current trends is one pleasure of the book; another is watching people with different philosophies genuinely debate how to improve a bad situation. With new social structures, and advancing science, this is a book that fills the underserved literature-of-ideas corner of science fiction.

Doctorow effortlessly captures so many things here that standard hard SF glosses over in this sprawling tale of the first days of a better world that it's easy to overlook the scintillating plot, deep emotional connections and Dickensianly motley cast he creates.

Also on Economics of Morality, Ec of AI, Morality of Ec, AI on Ec...
And it's always great lectures, more like great discussions, because even when he's pushing a point, he's giving facts from the other side(s).

This in no way reflects upon the seller, but upon the book itself...
It is pro communism and anti capitalism. Karl Marx gets lifted up while taking a giant dump on Plato, most specifically Plato's Republic.
Communism has been directly responsible for HUNDREDS of millions of souls being killed, murdered, or simply starving to death. It astonishes me how such a failed concept keeps getting plugged with each generation of know-nothing "intellectuals." Just because you can speak or write eloquently doesn't mean you are qualified to rip an economic system that has done more to lift the most human beings up out of poverty than any other in the history of history! Capitalism is what rules every human interaction whether we admit it or not. I create something with value, and sell it to you for a price. Trade me some seeds for it, or we'll agree to swapping our time to help each other get our woodpiles chopped, or whatever. The easiest method is simply to trade MONEY for the thing of value you want or need.

But this book has as its basic theme the "Post Scarcity" utopia. A Marxist concept. Sorry, like it or not, but we exist in a meritocracy. And rightly so! When I was coming up as an electrical apprentice I had to EARN my respect as I acquired new knowledge and experience. You want the best doctor, you want the best nurse, you want a mechanic to work on your car who actually knows what he (or she) is doing, right?? Well, you don't get to that level unless you first lay the foundation of hard work, study, and good workmanship in whatever best practices you apply to whatever job you do.

Seniority is an actual thing. We look up to experienced people as leaders in their fields for a reason: it's logical and wise.

Sorry, although I finished reading this book (and it was a struggle, believe me) I must admit my brain hates my own eyes for doing it. Thank God I learned about the really real world, the one that works based on merit earned from experience. This utopia stuff is just hokum, a pipe dream for the ignorant youth to glom onto because it "seems" nice. I shall not be reading any more of this author's work in the future. My set of beliefs are based on individual liberty, capitalism (no, not "crony" capitalism), and the fact every person is entitled to 100% of whatever they build, create, and earn.

The condition of the book was excellent. I found reading the book was like pulling teeth and ended up stopping halfway. I gave it to someone else to read hoping that they will get better use out of the book.