Out on Blue Six

By Ian McDonald and Cory Doctorow

In a far-future city where happiness and stability are law, a group of rebels will fight for what it means to be human
The Compassionate Society was designed as a utopia, where people’s genetic predispositions and aptitudes—rather than random choice—guide their lives, and pain of any kind is illegal. In the self-contained city, happiness is the most cherished value, and the Ministry of Pain swiftly prosecutes anyone who interferes with the contentment of another. For many of its citizens—who were matched to their jobs, spouses, and friends—the Compassionate Society is perfect. But to Courtney Hall, a political cartoonist, it is a place of stifling mediocrity. When her satirical work makes her a target of the government, Courtney goes on the run, only to discover an entire underground network of dissidents, each fighting against the stagnation imposed by the Compassionate Society—a struggle that could stand as humanity’s last chance for growth, innovation, and ultimately, survival.
Thrilling and inventive, Out on Blue Six is Ian McDonald’s engrossing story of free will and self-determination, and of the true value of a life ruled not by fear, but by hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Dec 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781480461659

Ian McDonald

IAN MCDONALD was born in 1960 in Manchester, England, to an Irish mother and a Scottish father. He moved with his family to Northern Ireland in 1965. He has won the Locus Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. His novels include King of Morning, Queen of Day (winner of the Philip K. Dick Award), River of Gods, The Dervish House, the graphic novel Kling Klang Klatch, and many more. In 2019, Ian was named a Grand Master of Science Fiction by the European Science Fiction Society. He now lives in Belfast.

Reviews for Out on Blue Six

[bluepigeon-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a digital copy of Out on Blue Six!To say that Out on Blue Six is an impressive novel that thoroughly creates and intensely presents a City run by the Compassionate Society 450 years after the Break in mid-21st century in such utter horror and clarity to engulf one's psyche in a language that flows without any particular meaning in every word, yet forces a whole new consciousness when each word joins the flooding river, well, to say that would be an understatement.Perhaps what is most unique about Ian McDonald's novel compared to other futuristic, dystopian sci-fi novels is the chaotic language he deploys without any hesitation or restraint. If you are familiar with starting to watch a season of The Wire, when one is thoroughly lost in names, words, places that make no sense, and one has to watch three episodes in a row just to get what might be happening to whom, then you can expect a greater sense of disorientation at the beginning of Out of Blue Six. But surely, if you exercise patience and flex your thinking muscles, soon enough you will "get it." Interestingly, the words still baffle, even after 200 something pages, but they form a whole that makes sense in such a deranged way that every twist and turn is a revelation in its own right. The story follows two main groups of people as they live in/outside the City run by several higher organizations, some godly in their functions, though mere computer programs in essence. The Kafkaesque absurdity of absolute laws and rules are rigged eternally to maximize each person's happiness without harming others and avoiding pain of any kind. Everyone has test results, which determine a caste and a profession that will fit their happiness needs. Regardless of whether or not they are good at their job or not, regardless of where they come from or feel that they belong... They have no choice. In this regard, Ian McDonald's novel is very American in its one fixation: choice. And the liberation, the proof that humans can once again be trusted with their own destiny (rather than supercomputer deities that have transcended AI ruling their City), means having choice again. I thought, despite myself (since I know McDonald is not American), how American! Strange, that. Liberty as freedom of choice is certainly a long-lasting fixation of the American psyche (and it rears its head in many different and strange places, like the current debates about the future of the American healthcare system), and the ending, as well as the frontier the new humans decide to explore, gave the novel a very "America during the Cold War" feel for me.As with most, the journey is worth as much, if not more, than a beginning and an end, and this is absolutely true for the journey from the intensity of language in the beginning of the novel to the liberation in the end. The two groups travel through strange territories and create/witness even stranger events to finally converge in a way that has several "Ah!" moments, and it all starts to make more sense. In this regard, the first half of the book is rather surreal, while the second half is less so, and the latter half has more action and adventure in the page-turning sense. McDonald's language does not lose its intensity or crispness throughout, and it is a marvel to see how he stretches this invention of his to express the surreal and the real in a harmonious blend. The journey slowly unravels the many layers of obvious and subtle satire McDonald so strangely engineers, and one can easily go deeper and deeper into the symbolism to analyze who and what and when and where and how. Surely, there is something for everyone, whether it be a Messiah, or time travel, or bioengineering, or communists and democrats flinging sentient raccoons at each other in an underground rain forest. Throughout, McDonald maintains a melancholic mood that is dystopian, yes, and yet strangely hopeful, like a melancholic drunk who is singing an upbeat drinking song of gulag torture. This suits the plot very well, since hope is as important to the novel as is choice.I would give the novel a full 5/5, if it weren't for the ending, which was too optimistic and neat for my liking. Overall, Out on Blue Six is a surrealist triumph of language and the sci-fi genre itself. Recommended for those who like raccoons, satire, and performance art.

[chrisriesbeck · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Old-fashioned, as in 1970, not the end of the 80s. It's your standard computer-run society, though intended to help not hurt. As always, things don't really work so well. Although the opening chapters are satirical a la Pohl and Kornbluth, that fades away. Surprisingly little time is spent above-ground. There are two journey-threads. One follows Courtney, a cartoonist, on her journey beneath the mega-city after a satirical offering gets her in trouble. (Exactly how a cartoon series became a cultural centerpiece is never explained and struck me as just silly.) Courtney never becomes more than a cardboard Candide for me. Slightly more interesting is the tragic King of Nebraska who takes her as his protege. The other thread is more action-oriented and follows the mysterious amnesiac Kilimanjaro who takes up with a set of rebels of the Pussy Riot variety. Eventually it all comes together and resolves. No spoilers but again I found the endings very 1970s -- more an ending to fit the themes than anything remotely credible.Some people apparently love this novel. I don't mind the time spent reading it but I expect to forget most of it within a few months. I can't recommend it but I wouldn't warn you away from it. It might be just what you're looking for.

[salimbol · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of Ian McDonald's earlier books, and there's definitely a certain roughness around the edges. Nevertheless, it made returning to his works after an absence of many years a rewarding experience, because this was as intelligent, funky and imaginative as any of his stuff, with a quirkily distinctive authorial voice and some rather fascinating dystopian world-building.

[hugh_ashton_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have little hesitation in awarding this five stars - it's up there with Gibson as a vision of a semi-dystopian future (all too similar to present-day Japan in some ways). Characters are distinct and interesting - the world is coherent and marvellously detailed, and the language approaches sheer poetry at times. If you can find a copy, grab it and read it.

[wunder-62679 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Astonishing world-building, but at the expense of character and plot. I put it down a few times, but finished it because I wanted to know what happened to the city, not because of the characters.

This was McDonald's first novel and the problems are teething pains, not permanent flaws. His River of Gods has a rich world, real characters, and a twisted, involving plot.

[shanaqui_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Had this from NetGalley aaaages ago, and finally got round to reading it now. It's something very much in the vein of 1984, with some aspects clearly riffing on that, and it gives me really major d?j? vu about something I've read before (but which I suspect was published since). It's one of McDonald's earliest novels, published in the year I was born, and yet I don't think it's gone out of date as speculative fiction so often can.In a way, I found it predictable: once you know the roles of certain characters and how they fit into society, you can see how it's going to end. That doesn't diminish the fun of the ride, though: this is a quicksilver, frenetic book, a strange new world. I love the concepts here, filched from mythology and jumbled back up to make something new: Lares and Penates, household gods, mixed in with stuff straight out of 1984.While I didn't like this as much as I liked The Broken Land, and the writing style isn't always entirely for me (too disconnected, jumbled, like an abstract painting), I think it's worth a look, particularly if you enjoy dystopian stories. The last chapter or so is all a bit of a rush; a lot suddenly happens in a few words, and I could've enjoyed seeing it unfold more completely, but I like what's sketched in for us as the result of the climax of the story.

[willearnest · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Worth the read. An early dystopian novel with great imagination.

[randystafford · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

There are several problems with this story of a failed utopia 453 years after “the Break” that brought our world to a close, but the main one was that McDonald’s prose and conceptions are untethered to the historical, cultural, and geographical realities he must extrapolate from in his rightly acclaimed later novels set in various parts of the world like India, Brazil, and Kenya.The plot follows the adventures of Courtney Hall, cartoonist, whose satiric work runs afoul of the Office of Socially Responsible Literature of the Compassionate Society. She eventually finds herself in an underground kingdom and on a quest to go beyond the wall outside the city. The parallel plot follows Kilimanjaro West, an amnesiac man who shows up in that city and falls in with Kansas Byrne and her guerilla theatre troupe of the Raging Apostles. Of course, he has a destiny.As is his wont, McDonald samples a bunch of cultural artifacts and mixes them into his story. I detected the Statute of Liberty, Mutant Ninja Turtles, Exorcist the movie, Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination, Alice in Wonderland, and the movie Brazil.That’s fine. What’s not fine is McDonald impressionistic prose. Its constant alliteration , repetition, and rhyming wears thin. The symbolic portions of McDonald’s story rest uneasy beside bits of relatively hard and detailed technological and biological speculation.McDonald saved my opinion of the novel a bit in its last chapter though the answer to the central question, should an engineered society have the happiness of its citizens as its highest end and what are the consequences of that, was common and offered no new perspectives or observations. Or much in the way of plot twists either especially if you’ve read later McDonald novels.The parts of the novel I liked best were the cutaways to media snippets, government memos, and one-scene characters, even a play, which show life in the Compassionate Society with more vigor and interest than the main plots. Part of that effect is because, in these sections, McDonald drops the annoying style of the rest of the novel.On the whole, though, I can really only recommend it to McDonald completists.

[altheaann · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It’s always a great feeling to find a cyberpunk dystopia that I’d somehow overlooked.
Reminded me – just slightly – of Melissa Scott’s ‘Dreamships’ and ‘Dreaming Metal,’ – mostly because the story focuses on transgressive artists in a future, cyber city with strict caste rules.

Here, Courtney Hall, yulp (it’s the ‘yuppie’ caste), a successful cartoonist, wants to do a bit more with her comic strip, and introduce some social satire into it. She’s given a warning – but when she resorts to using a hacker to get her forbidden cartoon out to her readers, she suddenly finds herself a wanted criminal, on the run through the underground tunnels that she never knew existed.

Meanwhile, the Raging Apostles, in the chaos of a police raid, have picked up a new member. The Raging Apostles are a street performance art group, illegally made up of members from different social castes, that plans ‘flash’ style events. Their new member is Kilimanjaro West – a seeming amnesiac who picked his ‘name’ off the side of a building.

I have to admit, I’ve had mixed reactions to McDonald’s work. I loved his ‘Dervish House,’ but didn’t like (at all) some of his more surreal, absurd material, such as ‘Desolation Road.’ I further have to admit that I requested this book thinking it was a new title – it’s actually a rerelease; first published in 1989. There are bits here that I could do without – I’m just not a fan of the gene-modified talking raccoons, for example. However, many of the more ‘fractured’ elements here do eventually get pulled in – some of them very effectively. I do still feel that McDonald has improved as a writer over the past 20-odd years, but there’s a brilliance and originality on display here that makes the book more than worthwhile.

And hey – I totally agree with his message that art, and a bit of anarchy, are necessary for a vibrant, free society.


Copy provided by Open Road Media, through NetGalley. Thanks!