Feed

On Tamara's suggestion, I just finished Feed by M.T. Anderson. In the tradition of 1984 and Brave New World, Anderson takes current trends and extends them to a believable, if not exaggerated, dystopian future. In the book, consumer culture and the internet have been taken to extremes. Every child has a feed implanted at birth. The feed is basically a brain connection to the internet, which allows companies to beam advertisements directly into your head. People have become dependent on the feed - most are illiterate and have lost the ability to think independent thought. For all its depressing themes, the book is funny. The details of the consumer culture are disturbingly recognizable in such things as a show called Oh? Wow! Thing! and the slang used is dead on.

The main character Titus (presumably as in Andronicus) is a typical teen. On a trip to the moon, he meets a lonely outsider and rebel who could teach him a lesson. I think the cliched plot is a part of the message - an original story could no longer take place in M.T. Anderson's world. The novel is funny, subversive, and ultimately tragic. It's one of those books that makes me feel as though I need to push it on other people. So I am. Read it.