Goodreads Review: Feed
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is where I eat my words.
I resisted Feed. It was recommended to me by several close friends, but I put off reading it and put off reading it for what I now realize were fairly shallow reasons–first, that it looked like such a boy book, and, secondly, because I feared that this would be like Uglies: filled with grating slang and the glittering veneer of SF conceits but without any substance beneath them.
I was so, so wrong. Because Feed wasn’t anything like Westerfeld’s more recent dystopian series. Instead, it hearkens back to earlier, more substantial speculative fiction aimed at adults–there are shades of A Clockwork Orange here, but mostly I couldn’t help but think of Philip K. Dick. Anderson’s future world gleams with a Dick-like intensity; it is well-rendered and foreign and yet utterly recognizable, but more importantly, and again as is the case in many of Dick’s novels, the emotional core of the book is what makes it transcendent.
At first, as is the case with Uglies, it’s the technology of Feed that stands out: set in a far future where humans live in domed enclosures and have internet advertising, called Feeds, zapped into their heads, it’s the story of Titus, a teenage boy who was never taught to question the world around him–or the one inside his skull. On the moon, Titus encounters Violet, a pretty, slightly unusual girl, and takes her to a club where both of their feeds are hacked. This is a minor inconvenience to Titus, but has terrible side-effects for Violet, leading her down a long road toward her eventual death.
The setting here is much more textured than the above probably implies–this isn’t a clean utopia, but rather a commercial empire built upon the death of our planet and humanity. Hints of this texture are given early on, in the earliest references to the mysterious lesions that have begun to plague teenagers. But as the novel proceeds, the reader begins to learn precisely how diseased the planet, and human society, truly is, in fits and starts and stolen glimpses. Anderson doesn’t condescend to his audience by stating the cause for all of this decay explicitly, but there’s enough here that it’s clear and implicit.
In a way, Feed is really a treatise on grief–Titus’ grief for the still-living Violet as she declines, the grief of both Violet and her father for all of their world–and an examination of how commercial society offers insufficient comfort in the face of death. It’s not insignificant that, when discussing things she would like to do in her short life, the only dream Violet can conjure that doesn’t come from a sitcom opening is visiting the sacrificial grounds of Mayan temples. The commercial society of Feed has no vocabulary for sacrifice, for horror, or for death.
This was truly a challenging, beautiful read, and I’d highly recommend it, not only for young readers, but for anyone interested in layered, complex science fiction.
Phoebe
Phoebe is a 20-something writer who lives in New York State with her husband and cat. She is a dork, not a geek or a nerd.
Her debut novel, Starglass, will be released from Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers in Summer 2013.
5 comments
Yeah, that's exactly how I felt about Uglies. It was annoying. Couldn't finish it.
I first saw this book the other day in a "sci-fi for Young Adults" list. I'd read 7 out of 10 of the list, but this was one I hadn't read. I'll check it out soon.
You might find this a bit annoying at first–it uses a similar sort of slang (though more convincingly). Stick with it, though! It's worth it.
This book sounds really SpagBol
Unit, it's actually pretty boyf.
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, at yesterday's Instant Search press conference:
"We can suggest what you should do next, what you care about. Imagine: We know where you are, we know what you like."
"Not only are you never lonely, you're never bored! We'll suggest what you should be watching, because we know what you care about."
"A near-term future in which you don't forget anything, because the computer remembers. You're never lost."