Books › Walkaway
Walkaway
560 pages
A fiercely optimistic, idea-dense joyride through a post-scarcity apocalypse where building a better world means fighting the billionaires who want to live forever.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like staying up all night in a hacker space, fueled by caffeine and radical optimism. It is a brisk, idea-dense journey that balances gritty post-apocalyptic survival with a fiercely hopeful vision of human solidarity. The prose is sharp, wry, and heavily driven by philosophical dialogue, asking readers to chew on complex theories of post-scarcity economics and technological immortality between bursts of high-stakes action. The mood is chaotic yet visionary, shifting from the cynical ruins of late-stage capitalism to the vibrant, messy reality of building a utopia from scratch. It will deeply satisfy readers who crave big-idea science fiction, anti-authoritarian rebellion, and stories that dare to imagine a future where community triumphs over greed.
- Mood
- chaotic
- visionary
- gritty
- hopeful
- Tone
- wry
- philosophical
- rebellious
- optimistic
- didactic
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- radical community · post-scarcity survival · class warfare · technological immortality · redefining society
- The writing
- Fast-paced, dialogue-heavy, and packed with dense, geeky philosophical tangents and sharp technological speculation.
- The arc
- Moves from cynical detachment to passionate, high-stakes communal defiance.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love big-idea sci-fi, hacker culture, and optimistic but gritty visions of dismantling late-stage capitalism.
Content notes
- violence
- death of loved ones
- climate disaster
- class-based oppression
About the book
Hubert Vernon Rudolph Clayton Irving Wilson Alva Anton Jeff Harley Timothy Curtis Cleveland Cecil Ollie Edmund Eli Wiley Marvin Ellis Espinoza―known to his friends as Hubert, Etc―was too old to be at that Communist party.
But after watching the breakdown of modern society, he really has no where left to be―except amongst the dregs of disaffected youth who party all night and heap scorn on the sheep they see on the morning commute. After falling in with Natalie, an ultra-rich heiress trying to escape the clutches of her repressive father, the two decide to give up fully on formal society―and walk away.
After all, now that anyone can design and print the basic necessities of life―food, clothing, shelter―from a computer, there seems to be little reason to toil within the system.
It’s still a dangerous world out there, the empty lands wrecked by climate change, dead cities hollowed out by industrial flight, shadows hiding predators animal and human alike. Still, when the initial pioneer walkaways flourish, more people join them. Then the walkaways discover the one thing the ultra-rich have never been able to buy: how to beat death. Now it’s war – a war that will turn the world upside down.
Fascinating, moving, and darkly humorous, Walkaway is a multi-generation SF thriller about the wrenching changes of the next hundred years...and the very human people who will live their consequences.
Description from Open Library.
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