“Using multiple narrators is the perfect way to tell this story. Each actor employs slightly different voicings, which reveal subtle interpretations of character. The performers lend variety to the long passages of dialogue in which characters discuss their visions of the society they’re building…Energetic and passionate performances.” AudioFile
Description
Cory Doctorow’s first adult novel in eight years is an epic tale of revolution, love, post-scarcity, and the end of death.
Hubert Vernon Rudolph Clayton Irving Wilson Alva Anton Jeff Harley Timothy Curtis Cleveland Cecil Ollie Edmund Eli Wiley Marvin Ellis Espinoza―known to his friends as Hubert, Etc―was too old to be at that Communist party.
But after watching the breakdown of modern society, he really has nowhere left to be―except among the dregs of disaffected youth who party all night and heap scorn on the sheep they see on the morning commute. Falling in with Natalie, an ultrarich heiress trying to escape the clutches of her repressive father, the two decide to give up fully on formal society―and walk away.
After all, now that anyone can design and print the basic necessities of life―food, clothing, shelter―from a computer, there seems to be little reason to toil within the system.
It’s still a dangerous world out there, the empty lands wrecked by climate change, dead cities hollowed out by industrial flight, shadows hiding predators, animal and human alike. Still, when the initial pioneer walkaways flourish, more people join them. Then the walkaways discover the one thing the ultrarich have never been able to buy: how to beat death. Now it’s war, a war that will turn the world upside down.
Fascinating, moving, and darkly humorous, Walkaway is a multigenerational SF thriller about the wrenching changes of the next hundred years—and the very human people who will live their consequences.
Praise
“Using multiple narrators is the perfect way to tell this story. Each actor employs slightly different voicings, which reveal subtle interpretations of character. The performers lend variety to the long passages of dialogue in which characters discuss their visions of the society they’re building…Energetic and passionate performances.” AudioFile
“The darker the hour, the better the moment for a rigorously imagined utopian fiction. Walkaway is now the best contemporary example I know of, its utopia glimpsed after fascinatingly extrapolated revolutionary struggle. A wonderful novel: everything we’ve come to expect from Cory Doctorow and more.” William Gibson, New York Times bestselling author
“Is Doctorow’s fictional utopia bravely idealistic or bitterly ironic? The answer is in our own hands. A dystopian future is in no way inevitable; Walkaway reminds us that the world we choose to build is the one we’ll inhabit. Technology empowers both the powerful and the powerless, and if we want a world with more liberty and less control, we’re going to have to fight for it.” Edward Snowden, surveillance disclosure specialist
“Revolves around sharing, fierce debate and open-sourced best practices. It is world-as-lesson-as-world. An anti-Atlas Shrugged. An origami argument that unfolds into a novel.” NPR
“[A] gritty yet hopeful sci-fi epic…Doctorow sticks the landing with a multigenerational saga that extends this tale of the ‘first days of a better nation’ to a thrilling and unexpected finale. A truly visionary techno-thriller that not only depicts how we might live tomorrow but asks why we don’t already.” Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Details
| Language | English |
|---|---|
| Release Day | Apr 24, 2017 |
| Release Date | April 25, 2017 |
| Release Date Machine | 1493078400 |
| Imprint | Cory Doctorow |
| Provider | Cory Doctorow |
| Categories | Science Fiction & Fantasy, Science Fiction, Post-Apocalyptic, Science Fiction, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Fiction - All, Fiction - Adult |
Author Bio
Cory Doctorow is a blogger, journalist, and author science fiction and nonfiction. His writing has won numerous awards, including three Locus Awards, two John W. Campbell Awards, three Prometheus Awards, two Sunburst Awards, the White Pine Award, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award, among others. He has served as Canadian regional director of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He is coeditor of the blog Boing Boing, and he was named one of the web’s twenty-five “influencers” by Forbes and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He is a contributing author to Wired magazine, and his writing has been published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, the Globe and Mail, the Boston Globe, Popular Science, and others.
Narrator Bio
Amber Benson cocreated, cowrote, and directed the animated supernatural web series Ghosts of Albion. She is the author of Witchery, Accursed, and the novella Astray. As an actress, she has appeared in dozens of roles in feature films, TV movies, and television series, including the role of Tara Maclay on three seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Benson also wrote, produced, and directed the feature films Chance and Lovers, Liars, and Lunatics.
Gabrielle de Cuir, award-winning narrator, has narrated over three hundred titles and specializes in fantasy, humor, and titles requiring extensive foreign language and accent skills. She was a cowinner of the Audie Award for best narration in 2011 and a three-time finalist for the Audie and has garnered six AudioFile Earphones Awards. Her “velvet touch” as an actor’s director has earned her a special place in the audiobook world as the foremost producer for bestselling authors and celebrities.
Justine Eyre is a classically trained actress who has narrated many audiobooks, earning the prestigious Audie Award for best narration and numerous Earphones Awards. She is multilingual and known for her great facility with accents. She has appeared on stage, with leading roles in King Lear and The Crucible, and has had starring roles in four films on the indie circuit. Her television credits include Two and a Half Men and Mad Men.
Amanda Palmer rose to fame as the lead singer, pianist, and lyricist for the acclaimed band the Dresden Dolls and performs as a solo artist as well as collaborating with artists including Jonathan Richman and her husband, author Neil Gaiman.
Lisa Reneé Pitts is an accomplished actress in theater, film, and television, appearing in The Practice, The Shield, and Law & Order. A native New Yorker, she holds a BFA in theater arts from Rutgers University and resides in Burbank, California.
Wil Wheaton is an award–winning actor, voice artist, author, and audiobook narrator. Among his movie credits are Stand by Me and Toy Soldiers. His many television credits include Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Big Bang Theory, and Generator Rex. As a narrator of more than a dozen audiobooks, he has twice won the prestigious Audie Award, twice been a finalist for the Audie, and earned an Earphones Award from AudioFile magazine.
Mirron Willis—actor of film, stage, and television—is the winner of the prestigious Audie Award for best narration in 2012 and a finalist for the Audie in 2015, as well as the winner of four AudioFile Earphones Awards for his audiobook recordings. He has worked extensively in film and television and on stage with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Houston Shakespeare Festival, and the Ensemble Theatre, among others. He has recorded some 150 audiobooks, including the Smokey Dalton series by Kris Nelscott and My Song by Harry Belafonte. He resides and records audiobooks on his family’s historic ranch in East Texas.
Overview
Cory Doctorow’s first adult novel in eight years is an epic tale of revolution, love, post-scarcity, and the end of death.
Hubert Vernon Rudolph Clayton Irving Wilson Alva Anton Jeff Harley Timothy Curtis Cleveland Cecil Ollie Edmund Eli Wiley Marvin Ellis Espinoza―known to his friends as Hubert, Etc―was too old to be at that Communist party.
But after watching the breakdown of modern society, he really has nowhere left to be―except among the dregs of disaffected youth who party all night and heap scorn on the sheep they see on the morning commute. Falling in with Natalie, an ultrarich heiress trying to escape the clutches of her repressive father, the two decide to give up fully on formal society―and walk away.
After all, now that anyone can design and print the basic necessities of life―food, clothing, shelter―from a computer, there seems to be little reason to toil within the system.
It’s still a dangerous world out there, the empty lands wrecked by climate change, dead cities hollowed out by industrial flight, shadows hiding predators, animal and human alike. Still, when the initial pioneer walkaways flourish, more people join them. Then the walkaways discover the one thing the ultrarich have never been able to buy: how to beat death. Now it’s war, a war that will turn the world upside down.
Fascinating, moving, and darkly humorous, Walkaway is a multigenerational SF thriller about the wrenching changes of the next hundred years—and the very human people who will live their consequences.
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