Looking around at people today, it's not hard to see where MT Anderson got his idea for his satire on modern communications. Teenagers text each other all day; colleagues email people at the next desk; for research, you can 'google' people, events or companies; people listen to personal stereos with a half-glazed look; and teenagers and office workers alike use instant messaging to talk in 'real time' over their PCs or mobile phones.

In Titus' world all of these communication devices exist - but fed instantly into his brain. He m-chats his friends; he checks out the latest sale at Weatherbee & Crotch (yes, the satire is sometimes blatant); he can watch the news inside his head and instantly look up words or ideas he doesn't understand from the 'feed'. Despite all this stimulation, he's bored. School™ beneath the Clouds™ is just about 'how to find bargains... and how to decorate your bedroom', sponsored by all the big corporations. Spring break on the moon with his friends just sucks too, it doesn't feel a good enough break from the world he knows. The girls in his group still have to watch the daily soap 'Oh! Wow! Thing!'' on the feed, and change their hairstyle three times a day as the feed instructs them.

When he meets Violet, another American teenager, who is visiting the moon alone, he learns stuff he'd been blinkered to: that only 73% of Americans have the feed, and she only got it when she was seven; that parts of the world are dying, and getting less air, and that the rest of the Global Alliance aren't too keen on American policies. Violet's been home-schooled by her father who resists the feed. When her software begins to have problems, the plot focuses on how she and Titus deal with her mortality, in very different ways. Anderson maintains his satire of teenage life by making sure their romance doesn't last, and that Titus blocks out how much he cares about her eventual death.

Violet's father refers to the eloi of HG Wells' The Time Machine, in a 'snotty' way, to tell Titus what society has become. Titus doesn't get it, and probably won't ever read it, but Feed may make some of today's teenagers go and read it themselves. They may also want to read Brave New World, and perhaps 1984 as well, but Feed is a good starting point as it uses so many ideas that are so close to 21st-century life.

2007-12-30