For the Win

For the Win
by
Cory Doctorow
read by
George Newbern

This is a science fiction novel? This is a science fiction novel. But it didn't have to be, in fact the sf bits of it are around the edges and largely incidental. There are four or five MMOs mentioned which to the best of my knowledge do not exist but for the most part actually sound like fun to play. There is no date given for when this story takes place, but it's not today, it's a day when Coca Cola is a big gaming company and there close to 4 billion people in China and India and retinal scans to start cars. But like I said, it was incidental. This story could have been one that took place now.
This story is one of the best explanations of macro economic forces and how monetary markets work that I've ever heard. At the same time, it manages to be a story that would warm Karl Marx's heart, wherein the workers of the world do rise up to demand the same privileges as the bourgeoisie.
But really, it's a story about characters and their struggles, their friendships, their loves - with a few lectures on economics sprinkled in. And I do mean lectures - a couple of times the narrator is talking directly to the listener/reader, other times it is an economist lecturing one of children he is working with.
Bad things happen to good people in this story, and some bad things done by bad people go unpunished, just like real life. Fortunately just like real life, some of the bad things happen to bad people and some of the good things happen to good people. In all, the characters seemed very three dimensional and humanly fallible.

Oh, and almost completely unrelated to this story, a particular phrase, "It's turtles all the way down" was used in it, which is not the most common of sayings, but one that just happened to pop up in a graphic novel I was reading at the same time (Fables #16 Inherit the Wind) and in a television show (Castle) that I watched during one of the days I was listening to this book, not to mention the previous audio book, the wonderful non-fiction account of the periodic table, "The Disappearing Spoon". What kind of synchronicity is at work here? There must be something important about this message? But, is it the message, that is turtles all the way down, or is it that fact that in the context the statement was originally uttered, it is wrong? Something for me to ponder for sure.