WALKAWAY – a novel by Cory Doctorow (Head Of Zeus, 2017)
What is it that derails dreams of utopia and resigns us to the notion that the future is fated to turn out dystopian? Cory Doctorow‘s ambitious and entertaining novel doesn’t provide any definitive answers to this plight but asks plenty of thought-provoking questions.
The problems of the soul-corroding world of work in the modern world are vividly described by Doctorow as one character remembers a daily routine consisting of “early mornings crunched on meaningless deadlines with the urgency of a car-crash for no discernible reason”.
Cory Doctorow poses the question : If another world to this is possible, what would it be like? His answer comes in the form of a utopian vision of a “better nation” which takes the sociopolitical aims of the Occupy Movement to their logical conclusion.
The cogs in the wheel driving this radical new society are ‘walkaways’. These are people who reject the conditioning that defines them by the products they buy or the work they do. In place of the corrupt,and corrupting, global financial system he imagines a “gift economy” based on a fair division of wealth and labour. Walkways are individuals driven by need not greed who are urged to “put off gratification today for survival tomorrow”.
The utopian elements are contained in the notion that people’s unselfish and ego-free altruistic instincts would be encouraged not exploited. Under this principle, “you have to want to be good, but not feel good about how good you are”.
Cory Doctorow
The fact that this goes against more cynical ideas about human nature is not lost on the author. On the contrary, Doctorow explores the apparent contradiction for all its comic and philosophical potential. Since we humans are often inclined to be fallible, impressionable and self-seeking, the dog eat dog survival instinct is not something that will be abandoned lightly. Doctorow is well aware that there is a fine line between being perceived either as “a slack loser or a Zen master”.
He is also cognizant of the reality that alternative societies are only tolerated when they provide no immediate threat to the status quo. Without the resources of the global economy, one can imagine a walkaway culture surviving but not thriving.
I think Doctorow realises that if the story were merely about the struggle for optimism over its reverse no one would believe an ending in which the good guys won. The spanner in the works he conceives, therefore, is that these idealists and dropouts have not only rejected the conventions of a capitalist system but have also discovered the means to upload the contents of human brains to computer systems.
This breakthrough towards prolonging life, albeit only in a digital form, fires the powerful members of the establishment (‘zottas’) into action to “strategically disrupt” or actively destroy the walkaway movement and to rob them of the innovative technology under the pretext of preserving social order.
The plot is engaging enough to carry these ideas although, at the same time, the narrative often becomes a dull series of battles between us and them as the ‘zottas’ ruthlessly pursue the secret of creating “immortal synthetic personalities” (‘sims’).
A big plus point, however, is that Doctorow’s techno savvy works to his advantage and he has a keen ear for smart turns of phrase. For instance, he talks about ambitions to “viralize immortality” and the need for “situation appropriate paranoia”.
Any readers inclined to thinking that Doctorow is being a little fanciful over death denial are directed to Yuval Noah Harari’s ‘Homo Deus’. In this ‘brief history of tomorrow’ there’s a section entitled ‘The Last Days of Death’ in which Harari states “In the 21st century humans are likely to make a serious bid for immortality”. He outlines how defeating death has become the holy grail of modern science and modern man. With recent technological and scientific advances, this no longer seems the stuff of science fiction.
This is endorsed by Douglas Rushkof’s article in Medium entitled ‘Survival of the Richest’ in which he described an elite group of the super wealthy who “were preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether and insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape”.
We can also find evidence in the story of the Silicon valley billionaire who is willing to pay a fortune to have his brain uploaded so he can ‘live’ forever.
In his acknowledgements, Doctorow cites Rebecca Solnit’s ‘A Paradise Built In Hell’ are one of his main influences. This quote from a NYT extract of this book helps explain why: “Many fail to notice that it is not the ideals, the ends, but the coercive and authoritarian means that poison paradise”.
Doctorow’s excellent novel acknowledges that the hope a human-centered paradise seems lost but he offers enough reasons for not abandoning this pipedream just yet.
