Walkaway by Cory Doctorow

Walkaway: A Novel by Cory Doctorow --- 379 pages

In an article in Wired cited below, Cory Doctorow talks about why his new novel is utopian not dystopian.

"The difference between utopia and dystopia isn't how well everything runs. It's about what happens when everything fails."

Walkaway is the story of the first days of a better nation, and the journey to get there.

You either love Doctorow or you shake your head in bafflement. I love his stuff, and the reviewer in steemit made two key connections that helped me understand why: he connects Walkaway with Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, one of the very first science fiction books I read in my early teens. Granted, Heinlein was a bona fide sexist pig: he's also one of the Holy Trinity of postwar American science fiction writers, along with Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury. He also makes the connection between Doctorow's "walkaway" and another one of my all time favorites, Ursula K. LeGuin's short story, "The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas." If Heinlein is part of the Holy Trinity, LeGuin is the Mother Goddess of 20th century American speculative fiction. Maybe that makes Doctorow some kind of 21st century John the Baptist, preparing the way?

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus.

Click HERE to read the review from NPR.

Click HERE to read Doctorow's essay, "Disasters Don't Have to End in Dystopias" in Wired.

Click HERE to read the review on steemit.com.