Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1947374 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-24
• Released on: 2003-06-24
• Formats: Audiobook, Unabridged
• Original language: English
• Binding: Audio Cassette

From Amazon.com
This brilliantly ironic satire is set in a future world where television and computers are connected directly into people's brains when they are babies. The result is a chillingly recognizable consumer society where empty-headed kids are driven by fashion and shopping and the avid pursuit of silly entertainment--even on trips to Mars and the moon--and by constant customized murmurs in their brains of encouragement to buy, buy, buy.

Anderson gives us this world through the voice of a boy who, like everyone around him, is almost completely inarticulate, whose vocabulary, in a dead-on parody of the worst teenspeak, depends heavily on three words: "like," "thing," and the second most common English obscenity. He's even made this vapid kid a bit sympathetic, as a product of his society who dimly knows something is missing in his head. The details are bitterly funny--the idiotic but wildly popular sitcom called "Oh? Wow! Thing!", the girls who have to retire to the ladies room a couple of times an evening because hairstyles have changed, the hideous lesions on everyone that are not only accepted, but turned into a fashion statement. And the ultimate awfulness is that when we finally meet the boy's parents, they are just as inarticulate and empty-headed as he is, and their solution to their son's problem is to buy him an expensive car.

Although there is a danger that at first teens may see the idea of brain-computers as cool, ultimately they will recognize this as a fascinating novel that says something important about their world. (Ages 14 and older) --Patty Campbell

Books in Canada
Imagine a world where a computer implant sends endless banner ads streaming directly into your head along with the very latest pop songs, fashion tips, news stories, television programs of every kind and snippets of the most trivial and utterly meaningless information and chat with your friends through mind links. In this world who you are and how you live is totally determined by what you buy; you're no longer an individual, but a lifelong product point where everything that you'll ever know is completely controlled by the mega-corporations that pump out the ongoing feeds of information. This is the world that M.T. Anderson has brilliantly conjured in Feed, his breathtakingly chilling new novel for teen readers. Titus and his buddies are taking a meg break from SchoolT, visiting the moon to have a bit of fun. Titus is hoping to meet someone and he does—Violet, the most beautiful girl he has ever encountered, and, amazingly, the interest is mutual. But overall the moon sucks, especially when Titus, Violet and company have their feeds hacked into by The Coalition of Pity. For Titus, it's an annoying inconvenience—he's cut off from the feed for a few days, feels a little lost, especially since he's missing the latest episode of Oh? Wow! Thing! He's reconnected soon after, however, and life goes on as before. But the hacker has irreparably damaged Violet's receptor and her ability to receive the feed suddenly begins to break down as do her very basic motor functions. Titus finds himself paired with someone who's going to lose her life (and perhaps his) because of the feed. What makes the situation more terrifying is that he's unable to fathom how anyone can cope through life without feed? This is a brilliant 1984-like novel that will grip teen readers in its powerful and provocative indictment of rampaging consumerism.
Jeffrey Canton (Books in Canada)

From Publishers Weekly
In this chilling novel, Anderson (Burger Wuss; Thirsty) imagines a society dominated by the feed a next-generation Internet/television hybrid that is directly hardwired into the brain. Teen narrator Titus never questions his world, in which parents select their babies' attributes in the conceptionarium, corporations dominate the information stream, and kids learn to employ the feed more efficiently in School. But everything changes when he and his pals travel to the moon for spring break. There Titus meets home-schooled Violet, who thinks for herself, searches out news and asserts that "Everything we've grown up with the stories on the feed, the games, all of that it's all streamlining our personalities so we're easier to sell to." Without exposition, Anderson deftly combines elements of today's teen scene, including parties and shopping malls, with imaginative and disturbing fantasy twists. "Chats" flow privately from mind to mind; Titus flies an "upcar"; people go "mal" (short for "malfunctioning") in contraband sites that intoxicate by scrambling the feed; and, after Titus and his friends develop lesions, banner ads and sit-coms dub the lesions the newest hot trend, causing one friend to commission a fake one and another to outdo her by getting cuts all over her body. Excerpts from the feed at the close of each chapter demonstrate the blinding barrage of entertainment and temptations for conspicuous consumption. Titus proves a believably flawed hero, and ultimately the novel's greatest strength lies in his denial of and uncomfortable awakening to the truth. This satire offers a thought-provoking and scathing indictment that may prod readers to examine the more sinister possibilities of corporate- and media-dominated culture. Ages 14-up.
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