In the virtual future, you must organize to survive
At any hour of the day or night, millions of people around the globe are engrossed in multiplayer online games, questing and battling to win virtual “gold,” jewels, and precious artifacts. Meanwhile, others seek to exploit this vast shadow economy, running electronic sweatshops in the world’s poorest countries, where countless “gold farmers,” bound to their work by abusive contracts and physical threats, harvest virtual treasure for their employers to sell to First World gamers who are willing to spend real money to skip straight to higher-level gameplay.
Mala is a brilliant 15-year-old from rural India whose leadership skills in virtual combat have earned her the title of “General Robotwalla.” In Shenzen, heart of China’s industrial boom, Matthew is defying his former bosses to build his own successful gold-farming team. Leonard, who calls himself Wei-Dong, lives in Southern California, but spends his nights fighting virtual battles alongside his buddies in Asia, a world away. All of these young people, and more, will become entangled with the mysterious young woman called Big Sister Nor, who will use her experience, her knowledge of history, and her connections with real-world organizers to build them into a movement that can challenge the status quo.
The ruthless forces arrayed against them are willing to use any means to protect their power—including blackmail, extortion, infiltration, violence, and even murder. To survive, Big Sister’s people must out-think the system. This will lead them to devise a plan to crash the economy of every virtual world at once—a Ponzi scheme combined with a brilliant hack that ends up being the biggest, funnest game of all.
Imbued with the same lively, subversive spirit and thrilling storytelling that made LITTLE BROTHER an international sensation, FOR THE WIN is a prophetic and inspiring call-to-arms for a new generation
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5.0 out of 5 stars A Novel of Ideas–the Idea is Compassion
Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2012
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Some reviewers are accurate in saying this novel does not explore character development. That is a valid complaint. It is the complaint most often lodged against sci-fi including greats like H.G. Wells, Jack Vance, etc. Many literary critics, however, have pointed out that a Novel of Ideas has a different purpose than a Novel of Characters and should be judged by its intention.
Why write a Novel of Ideas when you could just write nonfiction essays, one commenter said. The reason is that we identify with the characters when written as fiction and the ideas permeate us more fully.
The best kind of novel would have the ideas, and the characters would also develop, like H.G. Wells Ann Veronica, or Jack Vance’s character Wayness Tamm in the Araminta Station trilogy. But among the fifty-ish novels each of those two authors gave us, only one or two stand out as having the Character AND the Idea. Perhaps it is difficult to do both, and rare. Cory Doctorow gave us only the Idea, not the Character, in For the Win.
I thoroughly enjoyed For the Win. The idea kept me reading late into the night. I’d like to give the rest of this review to the Idea that Doctorow gave us in this book. The idea is compassion. It is not just a political stance, which could easily be catagorized as Liberal, with the value of Unions for exploited workers. But there are many scenes beginning about a third of the way through the book, and continuing through the end, that give an unconditionally compassionate perspective. For example, on p 179, the enlightened character Ashok says:
“You can talk all you want about ‘Indian workers,’ but until you find solidarity with all workers, you’ll never be able to protect your precious Indian workers.”
This is a perspective that does not (yet) belong to the Left or to the Right. What I want, I wish for others, even my competitors in other counteries, is a version of the Golden Rule, that has been around since Confucious and Leviticus and later Jesus. This is the Idea in For the Win. And I feel this Idea alone is worth five stars, and worth encouraging many people to read.
I am forty eight, and I bought a copy for my 22 year old daughter. She has struggled with optimism about the direction the world is going. If more people would read books like this, perhaps the enthusiasm of human solidarity would spread. That is the purpose of a Novel of Ideas. And if the people of the Writer’s generation dismiss the Idea as something that will never happen, perhaps it will be the following generation, or 2000 years later that people still reading will say, “you know, I think he was right and let’s do this Idea now.”
For these reasons I feel this novel fits into the category of Wells’ “Novel of Ideas,” and this is an Idea worth supporting.
4.0 out of 5 stars Gold farming is dependent on servers staying online
Reviewed in the United States on August 24, 2020
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This was a very interesting and mind expanding book.
As Americans we look at video games as things that gamers play. A few make millions but no one expects to make a living playing video games.
In foreign (less affluent) countries, “gold farmers” do make a subsistence living by exploiting features in the game to make in game gold which is translated into value outside of the game and which is gambled on by futures traders. It pays a bit more and is less risky than working in a factory all day where you’re exposed to machines and chemicals and worker safety standards are almost non-existent.
We Americans have it so good (and we don’t even know it).
I would’ve given the book 5 stars except for the huge chunks of narrative exposition that the author had to provide to explain the economics, union theory, and other factors behind the story. While necessary, I groan every time I found myself heading into a narrative valley for a period.
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger — the co-editor of Boing Boing and the author of the YA graphic novel In Real Life, the nonfiction business book Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free, and young adult novels like Homeland, Pirate Cinema, and Little Brother and novels for adults like Rapture Of The Nerds and Makers. He is a Fellow for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles
You Can get A Copy Of For the Win pdf Or Paperback By Cory Doctorow from these online store links below.
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