By Cory Doctorow
You can’t buy respect.
Mankind has cured every disease, solved the scarcity of resources, and even conquered death, but one problem still remains…boredom. People want to be entertained, and that leads to a new form of currency, Whuffie. Anytime someone manages to engage and entertain other people, they gain a little whuffie. Anytime someone does something reprehensible, they lose whuffie, and those without are reduced to the bare essentials, and treated as social pariahs.
The concept has many ramifications, but this story chooses to focus on the idea of social economics, uses one person’s experience working at Disney World as a microcosm, with a handful of flashbacks to establish a context. Scenes focus on action and dialogue, using summaries to gloss over nonessentials. This gives the story a strong focus and fast pace, at the cost of setting and character. A half-hearted catharsis heralds the end of the story, with a brief epilogue to wrap it all up.
+Strong ideas
*Simple Plot
*Interesting Setting
*A quick and easy read
-Weak Characters
2.5/5
Next time…
Ready Player 1 (Stand Alone)
2018/01/25
