Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels discussion

Spoilers allowed!

I read the book something like ten years ago. It had lots of interesting ideas, but also some pacing issues and the execution as a whole felt bit off. Also, what it is with Disney World that Doctorow finds so enthralling? This one big love-letter to Disney World would've been strange enough on its own, but then he repeats the whole thing in Makers as well. I don't get it.

Lol, yeah here’s an author who expounds on societal freedom & artist’s rights, yet he loves the Disney machine. I’m not calling hypocrisy but it is just kind of funny. I read Down & Out a few years ago too. Very quick, fun read, but it was the book that made me stop buying books. I paid $7 for it on Friday and finished it Sunday, ready to sell it back to HPB for pennies.

I was really glad when I was done reading this. I read Little Brother years ago and really liked it, Although, thinking back on it, I had a couple of problems with it at the time that I will sum up now by saying--compare the book's with revolutionary teens with those in Red Planet--which would you rather have as a teenager of your very own?

Anyway, Little Brother made me want to read all of Dotcorow's stuff, and in fact I have it all on a TBR challenge list in another group to be read this year. But I really did not like this because I disliked the main guy so much. I mean, I liked him at first, but then he seemed like a spoiled brat who would do anything to get his way because he's the one that is always right, you know he is!

Plus, the results of his actions, stupid and selfish as most of them were, make the whole book seem like an episode of I Love Lucy without the (supposed) humor. I really hate I Love Lucy because nothing she every tries to do--and she tries so hard--ever comes out right. This guy's story seemed like that to me. Even though I thought he was often not doing good things, none of them succeeded. Plus I didn't like him, plus no humor. Lucy is at least a nice person. I'm not so sure about this guy. He just seems selfish.

But yes, I really loved the worldbuilding. Has he ever used this world in anything else he has ever written? I may have to read this again more slowly sometime in the future just for the worldbuilding. How cool!

And Doctorow's writing is great, too.

Kateblue wrote: "And Doctorow's writing is great, too."

Usually, yes, but not always. I read almost everything he wrote about ten years ago, and while most of it was pretty good, there were some stinkers in the mix, too. I still cringe when I recall some scenes from Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town - in fact, that whole book felt like Doctorow had made a bet he could write a post-modern book, and failed ignominiously.

Makers was pretty bad, too, but in completely different way. It had all the elements of a good book, but it felt like the author had a major depressive episode in the middle of the writing process, so the tone of the book kept swinging wildly from optimistic techo-futurism to bleak disillusionment.

Well, I am 65% through Attack Surface right now, and I am fluctuating between really liking it and not wanting to read another single page. Also depressing, to me, anyway. So will probably try more of his stuff, but I will look out for those two, Antti. Thanks.

Do you ever hate being right? The following is a big fat spoiler…

I didn't trust Dan from the beginning. I hated myself for it, but I couldn't make my suspicions go away and then I turned out to be right. So why did the main character forgive him? It made no sense to me! Also reaffirmed my depressive realist's cynicism… (LOL)

Anyway, I've never understood the Disney fascination. It all just feels like false fake pretend happiness to me; even if it was real it would be too simplistic to engage me. I like the occasional Disney movie now and again, but that's about all I can stand.

I think some of the point of the book was taking the sterile, forced happiness that some people really like about Disney and scaling it up... of course, as a 'modern' writer, we don't actually get to see that, since modern sci fi writers often are afraid of having opinions.
(I'm a little bitter this morning after the events yesterday about.. everything)

I also don't get the Disney thing... I see them as a corporation that is attempting to standardize creativity, and it's terrible. Thank goodness for Dave Filoni, or Star Wars would have gone to the same place the Muppets are in right now (probably still will, at some point).

Anyway, the book. Interesting concepts that didn't get explored enough, so that we are robbed of what I think is the best part of sci fi.. being made to think about the ideas, then having a person to 'discuss' them with in the book. Here, we get the ideas, but nothing else. I HATE that.

While I can see some people (especially Disney fans) enoying the book, I can't say I'd read something else by the author.. frankly most of his concepts were done better in a Black Mirror episode.

Joe wrote: "frankly most of his concepts were done better in a Black Mirror episode...."

Thank you for pointing it out. That is exactly how I felt about it. A one-trick pony treading shallow waters of morality, trying hard to be passed for something imbued with deep meaning. I did not find it original and it felt like a prompt exercise from creative writing.

I finished it and I liked but not loved it. the concept of reputation as money is interesting even if he himself shows why it won't work https://craphound.com/down/2016/03/04...

The idea of getting a new body getting so cheap that you die-rebirth just not to have a cold is awesome - usually in SF that process is costly, so a very cool alternative.

As for Disney, I thought he was more in love with idea of workers there getting it from shareholders exactly because it would be a public debacle otherwise.

I suspected Dan, but I suspected his girlfriend - it is just a suspicious me :)

Thanks for the link. It's interesting. Whether you like Doctorow or not, he has interesting ideas

My review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Just finished it, thankfully not too long. As the first Doctorow I've ever read, I thought he had an enjoyable writing style, so I will happily try more of his books, but what he chose to write about in this was mostly just uninteresting.

So..... after the girl admits to murdering Julius, there is no punishment? Just because he will be able to re-boot in a new body, murder is OK?

No punish for the girl but punishment for Debra - I thought that was weird and unexplained too.

Ed wrote: "So..... after the girl admits to murdering Julius, there is no punishment? Just because he will be able to re-boot in a new body, murder is OK?"

A very idea of murder has changed - if it means just losing days of work/life (if it is painless and instant) it becomes like time lost in traffic - it does drive one crazy but usually we as a society don't punish traffic jams

Oleksandr wrote: "A very idea of murder has changed - if it means just losing days of work/life (if it is painless and instant) it becomes like time lost in traffic - it does drive one crazy but usually we as a society don't punish traffic jams"

I figured there would be a devil's advocate.
I suppose that is one of the ideas Doctorow had, but I felt like it was one of the most unexplored. Murder as a crime did not become irrelevant, nor it would ever become unpunishable. People could still be charged for damages to one's property (a clone body), intent to harm, loss of earnings, intentional infliction of emotional distress and many more related issues that would arise from getting murdered.

That is why this book reads like an undergrad wrote it, his ideas feel half baked and lazy.

Oh, we do charge people for traffic jams if we know who's to blame. You can get arrested and charged for it just as with any other public nuisance/reckless endangerment crime.

I concur that the idea was underdeveloped. My point was that it shifted from capital crime to misdemeanor. as for traffic jams - every single one has a cause, but in most cases their is not enough society demand to find the cause in every single case

Art wrote: "That is why this book reads like an undergrad wrote it, his ideas feel half baked and lazy."

TBF he was probably an undegrad or close to one when he wrote it?

I had the same feeling from this book as I got from LMB's Shards of Honor: kind of bad, but pointing towards good things in the future.

I feel like none of the ideas in this were new, none were investigated very far, and not very much really happens. I suppose that if I were really fanatical about Disney World/Land I might enjoy it more. The main plot it is just some people arguing about how to keep an adventure park interesting to themselves and other fans.

Some things at Disney are fun. I love the Magic Tiki Hut. Their attention to detail is amazing. But the main experience is waiting in lines. It is hard for me to believe that in future where people will go into hibernation to avoid the boredom of a 2 or 3 hour plane trip, they would still want to go to a park where the main thing you do is stand in lines.

Yes, if he was so affected as to really try "get" Debra for killing him as much as he did (and obviously that was commingled with him hating what she was doing to Disney programs) then why did he forgive both Dan and the girl. I think he must have been using the murder as an excuse to be nasty to Debra because Disney has to stay the way it was when he was a kid. Because why would he forgive Dan and the girl? Seemed flimsy and did not explain itself.

Still, cool concepts.

Kateblue wrote: "...why would he forgive Dan and the girl?..."

I'm not really sure. But I think it was because he realized he had been in the wrong and it was right for them to try to stop him.

Ed wrote: "Kateblue wrote: "...why would he forgive Dan and the girl?..."

I'm not really sure. But I think it was because he realized he had been in the wrong and it was right for them to try to stop him."

OK, but when they killed him, I didn't think he had done very much, if anything. So why? Anticipating his future actions? But I don't care enough to go back and look. So, ok, I will go with your explanation

Kateblue wrote: "I don't care enough to go back and look. ..."

Me, neither. I've moved the book to the official spot reserved for books that are soon to leave my house. There are no pardons issued and no book may leave that zone until on its final journey. (In this case, going back to the library.)

I’ll go back to Disney someday but my last two times there were not much fun. One was a day trip where it was a downpour all day; the only relief was a great German meal at Epcot, with beer. The previous time was the year before I had my knees replaced, a 10-day trip with my teenage daughters, their only time. So much walking, and the only way I survived was an ample supply of Vicodin. It was what convinced me to do the surgeries.

I really like Doctorow as a writer. Despite the failure of this book in my view, it was his first, and the other things I’ve read since - Little Brother & Radicalized - have been great.

I read this a couple of years ago - I enjoyed it (he does write well), and I enjoyed some of the concepts as well.

Disney - well, yeah, I didn't like the idea of Disney World (Paris), and went under duress - a first time, a wet weekend, sick kids, fights, its was horrible. Returned a couple of years ago with sunny weather, happy kids and for some reason, we got the royal treatment - guests of the week in the lodge with goodies bags (the kids still use the keyrings and their stuffed toys), and an amazing number of fast-passes handed out, unsollicited, by staff to my smiling and enthusiastic kids. And plus, star wars rides!! And despite myself, I really enjoyed it. Now I wouldn't go back, but I can see how someone who was already a fan, having that sort of experience, could come to have a most reverant attitude to the place.

Reputation as money, I can imagine this one day. I liked Marie Lu's (later, inspired?) take on it in the YA dystopia Legend as well. I kind of make sense if you are in a closed, rich, society.

Ed said
>The main plot it is just some people arguing about how to keep an adventure park interesting to themselves and other fans.

I thought that was the main idea of the book - what makes something important, just how far should we be enshrining the past, and how much should we be concentrating on living our history and not someone else's past history... It resonated with me as it's a subject I keep coming across in my work, where there is opposition between heritage orders and the drive to renovating building stock to make it habitable, comfortable and climate-friendly. What is most important? A static vision of the past? Current liveability? Same subject as Dan explores in the book.