Seeing's how, on the last regeneration, I had precisely the same number of pages as finnegans wake, I'm taking that as an omen and publishing my first draft. Also, Cory's own licensing is unclear, so this might be it, but it had to be, inevitably and now, and while I may not really know much about what I like, I know a few things about art and at a joyously joycean 628 pages, here it is ...

Into the Magic Kingdom

This is, so far as I know, the first legally derivative work based on Cory Doctorow's relicenced Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Trevor repackaged the experience but I have re-invented it, ground up, and created something oddly familiar but completely new.

And be forewarned, this is not fan-fiction for the squeamish. My book is not recommended for younger students or those bonded to fixed dogmas of rightness in literature, language and narrative; I will yank the carpet from under those people, leave them without reference, awash in a tale without end and narry a thread to grab. This is advanced reader material, for those who love language, for those who ponder the relation between language and their mind, for those who love to watch their own brain squirm as it sifts the chaos for meaning and sense.

I expect some will rather stare at a blank sheet of paper, and that is fine. This book is not for everyone, it just is. It is at once a nihilistic anti-book and the apex of geek literary art. Every page is riddled with lucid insights, rife in rich and quotable poetic imagery, all of it bubbling with deep humour. If you've read the original, this book may be hazardous to your health.

And now the FAQs ...

1. What is this book about? --- put plainly, it's about you. More precisely, it is about your brain --- Cory's original book uses his words to tell his story about his world; Into the Magic Kingdom breaks the bonds of linear narrative using Cory's words to tell your story. It is the ultimate interactive fiction because it has no meaning at all until you become entangled in it. I know what I think I see; you will get a different surface narrative, but we both experience the same deep story, the first-hand story of the neural-linguistics of our own minds and our experiential perceptions of the topics that emerge from Cory's words.
   
   This book is also a directed self-examination with a poetic postmodern insight into the cultural phenomenon that is Cory Doctorow.
   
   
2. I can't read it --- sure you can and here's how: Go outside on a clear starry night and look up. Find the Great Bear (big dipper) or Orion the Hunter. A Hindi or Chinese astronomer will see different animals in the sky and tell different mnemonic legends; it is the same sky, yet each of us remain convinced we can see these dramas and we do so by throwing out 'noise' stars, only we throw out different stars than do the Chinese or Hindi observers.
   
   Into the Magic Kingdom is like those stars in the sky: you see what you've become conditioned to expect, even if you didn't know that was what you'd learned; if you're lucky, you see the Chinese sky too.
   
   
3. But you didn't write this, it is not art --- it is as much a work of art as Bach's Coffee Cantata: we both draw from our knowledge and experience to apply specific formulae of transformation to our materials; we both expect our audience to bring certain cultural training and we expect the performer to take liberties with the framework we deliver; we both choose our source material careful and we choose the end result.
   
   Like a Zen Garden or shamanic art, this book leads you inescapably face to face with your real self, both your carefully honed false cultural-mask believed-to-be dogmatic self and your natural true inner neuro-psychological self. This is not just art, it is high art.
   
   
4. Is it a novel? --- Of course it is. There are places, plays and characters who live, breathe, interact and grow. The more you read, the more their world takes hold of you, the more you want to know about them and where they are going. The difference is while Cory's original story gave you characters as they unfolded in his head, I give you your characters folded up in your head.
   
   
5. I still can't read it --- I'm not surprised. It is, after all a 628 page psychedelic trip, a half-wakeful tumbling future-speak inner dialog of a thousand Blooms, cast in a food court, cut by CB, by IM, SMS, emails, traffic noise and televisions, never alone, never at rest and it never stops, it never pauses, fast forward is useless.
   
   It is also self-similar, like a fractal (well, more like a fractal than perhaps I should tell you) so you can join at any point, wander forward or back, jump about ad hoc (maybe I'll code a page randomizer someday), explore this space the way we explore our meandering mind in zazen.

Like Erik Satie's epic Vexations or some Andy Warhol or Michael Snow films, it would take a dedicated adventurer to experience the whole of it. Don't over do it. Take your time, pace yourself; staring in a mirror too long isn't good for you.

grabbing some context

You could approach Inside the Magic Kingdom as expressionist art that simply is, a concrete collection of discreet sounds and phrase and syntax (and then dare yourself to read and not find meaning!).

You might approach my book as existentialist art that glides from moment to moment to precious moment, a world without end or point or meaning beyond each little point here and now ...

You might even frame it as Dadaist art, my having rendered the novel useless by making it unreadable, and best appreciated by printing the manuscript in a nice binding and simply having the book on your shelf so you can say, "This is that Cut-Up of that book by Cory Doctorow" and it will be that too (I'm working on a PDF edition, although, to do this properly, I'd want a publishing partner to pay Cory for resale rights, then print and bind it to sell limited numbered copies).

However this present is received, what is true is that it's done, or draft-done, or maybe it is done.

I don't know. Go ask your pop.

oh, and the bit about the 200 limited edition copies ... heck, why not? I'll even throw in the contents of the book for free.