M.T. Anderson, Feed (Candlewick Press, 2002)
"We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck."
So begins M. T. Anderson's teen dystopia novel, Feed. In the first chapter "your face is not an organ," Titus and his group of typical, upper-middle-class teen friends arrive to spend Spring Break on the moon. They plan to get drunk, to act stupid, to hang out, maybe to hook up. They do not plan to have their brains hacked at a local nightclub by an organization calling itself the Coalition of Pity, nor for their lives to be radically changed by the experience, at least for a time.
Feeds are the inextricable implants surgically grafted into the characters' brains in infancy. The feed allows Weatherbee & Crotch (a thinly-disguised Abercrombie & Fitch) to direct-market product into their conscious and subconscious minds twenty-four hours a day. The feed allows them to attend the corporate-run School™, giving them direct access to research materials so they can excel in their classes, where they learn things like "how to be better consumers." The feed allows Titus' friends Quendy and Calista and Loga to watch their favorite feedcast (piped directly into their brains). It's called "Oh? Wow! Thing!", "which has," explains Titus, "all these kids like us who do stuff but get all pouty, which is what the girls go crazy for, the poutiness."
Most importantly, the feed allows the teens to feel completely connected to the latest trends, the coolest gadgets, the must-have of the must-haves, all "bannered" to them each and every day of their lives. It's not unusual for the girls to excuse themselves to go to the restroom because they've received notice hairstyles have changed and they need to make adjustments.
When their brains are hacked, Titus and his friends are temporarily taken off-line. No "Oh? Wow! Thing!" No Weatherbee & Crotch. No continual flood of information every day, all day, inundating them with advertising. They can't even chat each other mentally, which Titus' father forgets when he comes to visit him in the moon hospital. He blinks, surprised, and resorts to the chore of merely talking to his son.
It's against this backdrop that Titus falls in love with Violet. Both are victims of the feed-hack, but the consequences turn out to be much more serious for Violet than they do for Titus, though in a rapidly disintegrating dystopian universe, "happily ever after" may be a moot point for the entire human race.
Feed won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Here is a Young Adult novel which does not patronize, nor preach. Serious global, social, environmental and even interpersonal topics are tackled, but the author uses an appropriately light touch with these. The characters speak enough obscenities to feel genuine, but not enough to feel vulgar. And Anderson manufactures memorable teen vernacular with more skill than anyone since Burgess in A Clockwork Orange. I finished this book wanting to address my friends: "Hey, Unit!", but I decided that might be null.
Be warned; this is an easy read, but not a fluffy one.
And add Feed to my list; it's one of my new faves.
