Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
- 62
- Pages
- about 1 h
- Reading time
- Locus Award for Best First Novel
Affiliate link: buying through it supports BookRank at no extra cost to you.
Our view
“Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” is an inventive, enjoyable science fiction novel about a world where reputation has replaced money. Doctorow sets a quarrel over new technology inside Walt Disney World, and the concepts carry the story. Some readers would like the characters drawn in more depth, even as they come to care about them. Readers who pick up science fiction for its thought experiments will get the most from it.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is a 2003 science fiction book, the first novel by Canadian author and digital-rights activist Cory Doctorow. It depicts people competing over how new technology is being used at Walt Disney World, in a post-scarcity world with an economy based on reputation. Concurrent with its publication by Tor Books, Doctorow released the entire text of the novel under a Creative Commons noncommercial license on his website, allowing the whole text of the book to be freely read and distributed without needing any further permission from him or his publisher.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.1 across 208 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 59% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Science fiction average of 7.8. That is how 7.4 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.5 | 13 | 6% |
| Hardcover | 7.1 | 195 | 94% |
Frequently asked
How long is Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom?
It has 62 pages — shorter than 100% of the ranked books in Science fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Science fiction — with scores between 7.3 and 7.4, closest to this book.
