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Showing posts with label consumerism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label consumerism. Show all posts

Friday, May 8, 2009

Feed by M.T. Anderson

Feed is cautionary tale about the excesses of consumerism. It is set in a world where Americans live in idle luxury, w/ their every want easily satisfied by their "feed," an internet connection in their head that suggests to them what they want before they even know it themselves. As a result of American's lavish lifestyles the world, particularly the environment, suffers.

Feed's protagonist is Titus, an American teenager who, while on a trip to go partying on the moon, meets a girl name Violet, who helps him change the way he thinks about his world.

I really liked this book. The message was great, the story well told and the character's were realistic. Titus, Violet, their friends, they are all wonderfully flawed characters. Each one has his or her own short comings, which makes them so real, so easy to relate too. I was always pulling for Titus to make the right choices, but he's limited by his world-view, his upbringing, the culture he was raised in and his decisions through out the book reflect that. You can't expect a person to change over night and you can't expect a society change over night either. Overall an excellent book. Give this one to fans of dystopian science fiction at its finest.


Monday, October 13, 2008

Jennifer Government


OkayI feel like I've been on a real dystopia bender lately, but hey it's my favorite genre and this blog is even called dinosaur dystopia (BTW I'm still searching for a great piece of dystopian dinosaur fiction so if you know of one lemme know), so y'all are gonna have to bear with me.

Jennifer government was awesomely dystopian, but not in the standard dystopian model. Usually dystopias are set in a post-apocalyptic world or they deal with a big brother type government. Jennifer Government does the opposite. The government has next to no power, taxes have been abolished and the police are a private organization. Large corporations hold sway over the world and more or less do as they see fit. In this story Hack Nike (Employees last names are dictated by the company they work for) signs a contract to work with the Nike corporation's guerrilla marketing department, unfortunately he doesn't read the small print and finds out he's just agreed to assassinate 10 people in order to hype the new Nike shoe line.

The book is wild ride thru a future which examines the consequences of consumerism and self-regulation. An exciting read and a great conversation starter. For grades 9+