Return to Pleasure Island

"Return to Pleasure Island" by Cory Doctorow is a science fiction short story published in the late 1990s, included in his collection "A Place So Foreign and Eight More" released in the early 2000s. The story delves into the lives of George and his brothers, who are golems operating in an amusement park reminiscent of Pinocchio's notorious Pleasure Island. The narrative explores themes of identity, transformation, and the consequences of indulgence as George navigates the complexities of his existence and familial relationships in a world that blurs the lines between human and beast. In the story, George, a golem, juggles his work at the midway while his brother Joe embarks on a path leading him to a troubling transformation, becoming more donkey-like as he indulges in the pleasures of the park. As the brothers grapple with their identities and the expectations set upon them, Joe mounts the path of an Imagineer, showing how ambition and desire can lead to personal metamorphosis. George yearns for a son of his own, reflecting on the cycle of life and the importance of family, but is faced with the reality of Joe losing his humanity. The tale culminates in a poignant exploration of what it means to care for each other in a world that seems intent on tearing them apart, revealing the bittersweet nature of their existence at Pleasure Island. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Cory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who served as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of its licences for his books. Some common themes of his work include digital rights management, file sharing, and post-scarcity economics.