Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0763622591, Paperback)

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

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0763617261, Hardcover)

In a future where most people have computer implants in their heads to control their environment, a boy meets an unusual girl who is in serious trouble.

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 074459085X, Paperback)

Titus doesn't think much of the moon. But then Titus doesn't think much at all. He's got his "feed" - an Internet implant linked to his brain - to do his thinking for him. It tells him where to party or get the best bargains and how to accessorize the mysterious lesions everyone's been getting.

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0739356208, Audio CD)

“We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.”

So says Titus, whose ability to read, write, and even think for himself has been almost completely obliterated by his “feed,” a transmitter implanted directly into his brain. Feeds are a crucial part of life for Titus and his friends. After all, how else would they know where to party on the moon, how to get bargains at Weatherbee & Crotch, or how to accessorize the mysterious lesions everyone’s been getting? But then Titus meets Violet, a girl who cares about what’s happening to the world and challenges everything Titus and his friends hold dear. A girl who decides to fight the feed.

Following in the footsteps of Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and Kurt Vonnegut, M. T. Anderson has created a not-so-brave new world–and a smart, savage satire about the nature of consumerism and what it means to be a teenager in America.

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0807216534, Audio Cassette)

THIS EDITION IS INTENDED FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. In a future where most people have computer implants in their heads to control their environment, a boy meets an unusual girl who is in serious trouble.