Last night I finished M.T. Anderson’s excellent Feed on audio, an excellent work set in a near future where 73% of people have Feednet wired directly into their brains. Though impressively thought out with lots of details that most science fiction never bothers with, I personally connected more with the main characters relationship and their struggle with terminal illness. I’m also glad I listened to the audio book version of this. I think I would have gotten very frustrated reading the futuristic teenspeak on paper. Teens I know might speak like that if they were transported to this future. Hearing it rather than reading it I think was a godsend.
Warning! The rest of the review contains some spoilering. I don’t think this is a book that is hurt by spoiling, but you’ve been forewarned.
The setting is the near future. Nearly everyone of means has the Feed. In some ways it’s a souped version of the internet. It has features like chatting, television, and music. The Feed also comes with artificial intelligence that monitors your activities, primarily so it can suggest things for you to buy. But most pernicious is that the Feed integrates with a person’s nervous system so thoroughly that person and computer cannot be separated. This little nugget is what drives the conflict.
Titus and his friends go to the moon for spring break. There they party like high school students will, attempting to get in to college parties when they can, hanging out at Chuck E. Cheese places when they can’t. At something like the latter, Titus meets and becomes enamored with a girl outside his circle: Violet. Smart and elitist, she’s on the moon trying to be a normal teenager for the first time in her life. But things go awry for everyone when a political hacker infects them with a Feed virus at a party. Quickly, all of Titus’ friends are screaming We enter a time of calamity!
at the top of their lungs. When order is restored, they find themselves in a hospital with their Feeds shut off as a precaution.
Without the Feed to distract them, Titus and Violet become pretty close and are dating by the time they return to Earth. The bulk of the book is really a garden variety high school romance, though exceptionally well written. A lot of the conflict is Violet trying to fit in with Titus’ crowd of normal
people, and her inability to set aside her elitism when faced with the crowd’s inevitable tendency to go along with the crowd. Violet wants to resist the feed. She longs for older days when life wasn’t so integrated. But she also wants to be cool and in too.
The other big issue is that the hack attempt left Violet’s feed damaged. Titus in some respects is a model boyfriend, supporting Violet as she tries to get herself fixed. But as her condition deteriorates and becomes more than just a damaged Feed but a damaged nerve system, Titus doesn’t handle things so well. I’ve never much cared for the five stages of grief
thing that is all the pop-psychology rage for when people are faced with tragedy. Titus sometimes just inexplicably shuts down emotionally. I thought how he dealt with Violet’s illness was incredibly plausible and realistic. It’s the strongest aspect of the book.
Quit a bit else was good too. Anderson’s eye for detail in constructing his world blew me away. Written mostly with exposition, it covers transportation, reproduction, education, environment, agriculture, and more. Incredibly well done. I loved the paragraphs that described the rise of the feed. How the omnipresent consumer culture lulled people to Feed slavery. Not just well-explained, I think Anderson did well in getting the attitude of the citizenry right with Titus first person history lesson.
One joy of the audiobook was narrator David Aaron Baker’s rendition of Titus’ father’s speaking. I think that character’s speech embodied the nature of the future described more than anything else.
Other blogged reviews:
Title: Feed
Author: M. T. Anderson
Narrator: David Aaron Baker
Imprint / publisher: Listening Library / Random House
Format: Audio book download
Length: 5 hours
Publication date: March 2008
ISBN-13: 978-0-739344392
LC classification: PZ7.A54395 Fe 2002
I too, was very happy to read/consume Feed in the audiobook format. Your point about the speech of Titus’ dad embodying the future is right on, and I also loved how the little mental pop-up ads were rendered on the audio. I doubt reading them on the page would’ve had the same impact.
You say the bulk of the novel is a “garden variety high school romance,” but doesn’t the main impression left by the novel on the reader focus on how decadent and materialistic the society there has become?