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When I first had set out to write about Apocalyptic fiction, it was on the heels of reading author and blogger Cory Doctorow\u2019s Wired.com article “<\/span>Disaster\u2019s Don\u2019t Have to End In Dystopias.”<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/i>With his new book <\/a><\/span>Walkaway<\/span><\/i>, Doctorow discusses how civilizations respond to disaster, in that they either try to formulate order or fall into disarray. He argues that, \u201cThe difference between utopia and dystopia isn\u2019t how well everything runs. It\u2019s about what happens when everything fails.\u201d (Doctorow) I found this a delightful but confusingly complex realm to explore. It left me with many open ended questions about what it means to fail as a society. It seemed paradoxical that a utopia could fail. As Doctorow views it, the perfect state is a \u201cdaydream,\u201d one which does not account for new and unknown hazards. This reminds me of the theory of \u201crisk societies\u201d brought up by Ulrich Beck, and how each fictional world is one imagining of a society fallen victim to a threat it has not anticipated. \u00a0Doctorow continues by adding that the problem in <\/span>Walkaway<\/span><\/i> has become society itself. He argues that many dystopia disasters feature \u201cprepper instincts,\u201d as in instincts of survival of the fittest pitting man against man. But what if man controlled this instinct, and became self-aware of the violence started by scarcity? This is the beginning of the weirdness in <\/span>Walkaway<\/span><\/i>. I warn you, this will become a bit difficult to process without having read the novel.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Doctorow defines <\/span>Walkaway <\/span><\/i>as a utopia, despite the evidence of a world falling apart around his characters. In <\/span>Walkaway<\/span><\/i>, Doctorow imagines a world in which much of the world has exiled-itself from the brutally efficient society of the ultra-rich. The exiles, or \u201cwalkaways\u201d, attempt to create a post-scarcity civilization while being slaughtered by the zillionaires who fear their radical ideology. To elaborate, they have achieved post-scarcity by sharing resources in a perfected form of socialism. All members of the community have equal means to create what is necessary to survive using various future-technology appliances. Their ultimate goal is to perfect the digitization of the human brain, making themselves immortal. Ultimately, the novel balances dystopian and post-apocalypse and transhuman motifs. As you can guess, this novel has been the newest, most complex, and most problematic book on my list. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The book follows Hubert, Natalie, and Seth, three early adults seeking a new like in the walkaway community. Walkways live in areas of the country abandoned by environmental disaster and decay. They recycle abandoned material and land, using advanced 3D-printers to suit their needs. Traditional society, called \u201cdefault\u201d, rejects them for various reasons. They could not find work. They were thrown out by their family. One character even cites her non-binary transgender identity as a factor for not agreeing with \u201cdefault\u201d. \u00a0The walkaway community replaces this with absolute freedom. On paper, this sounds ridiculous. Somehow, Doctorow makes a logical pattern out of this \u201cbetter nation\u201d community in <\/span>Walkaway<\/span><\/i>. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jason Sheehan wrote an NPR review<\/a> that shares many of my views on <\/span>Walkaway<\/span><\/i>, especially on the matter that it is too strange to articulate certain aspects into words. I enjoyed how he called the novel \u201cwhat comes after the slow burn apocalypse\u201d in that like the Genesis story of Noah\u2019s Ark, Walkaway discusses how \u201cAfter the flood, this is how we rebuilt…\u201d (Sheehan). This perhaps links well back into Doctorow\u2019s Wired article on <\/span>Walkaway<\/span><\/i>, in that he mentions in passing how 2017 itself was full of disasters. Whether the disasters of this year will lead to a rebuilt utopia or a downward dystopia is for us to decide. After the flood, how will we rebuild?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I had originally turned-away from discussing this novel and article. I struggled to deal with the \u201cdigital singularity\u201d aspect of this novel. Digital consciousness became a kind of \u201ccop-out\u201d to me, in that the characters \u201cescape\u201d the crumbling physical world for a digital landscape. Likewise, the social-political argument of class warfare between the ultra-rich and ultra-poor seemed like a thesis in itself. So I moth-balled this article, yet left Walkaway<\/em> on my reading list.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n As it is my tradition, I shine the house lights on you, dear reader, and ask:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n What does or does not make sense about <\/span>Walkaway<\/span><\/i> to you? Are you more inclined to read some of Doctorow\u2019s work? If you were me, what aspects of Doctorow would you include, if any?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Works Cited:<\/span><\/p>\n Doctorow, Cory. \u201cDisasters Don’t Have to End in Dystopias.\u201d Wired, Conde Nast, 2 June 2017, <\/span>www.wired.com\/2017\/04\/cory-doctorow-walkaway\/<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Doctorow, Cory. Walkaway: a Novel<\/em>. Head of Zeus, Tor Books, 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n Sheehan, Jason. \u201cIn ‘Walkaway,’ A Blueprint For A New, Weird (But Better) World.\u201d National <\/span>Public Radio, 27 Apr. 2017,\u00a0<\/span>www.npr.org\/2017\/04\/27\/523587179\/in-walkaway-a-blueprint-for-a-new-weird-but-better-world<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I first had set out to write about Apocalyptic fiction, it was on the heels of reading author and blogger Cory Doctorow\u2019s Wired.com article “Disaster\u2019s Don\u2019t Have to End In Dystopias.”\u00a0With his new book Walkaway, Doctorow discusses how civilizations respond to disaster, in that they either try to formulate order or fall into disarray. … Continue reading Reflection Paper: What Led Me To Apocalypse Fiction With Cory Doctorow’s New Novel<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2758,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145910,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-blog-posts","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2758"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}