Feed Book Review (No Spoilers)

I guess this is a more of a recommendation then a review, but oh well.

Feed is a really good sci-fi/tragedy book by M.T. Anderson. The book is very sarcastic, filled with swear words, and all of the main characters talk in a very post-modern, "blah" sort of tone. The opening line of the book is:

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

Hopefully that is a good indication of what is to come.

The feed is an implant in your head which basically gives you direct access to the internet: Every second of the day, you are inundated with targeted ads, random pop-ups, a voice assistant listening to your every thought, and more. The book is set in the not-so-distant future, were you can take a vacation on Mars, Venus, and the Moon, you can drive at break-neck speeds on in your up-car, and more. With all of this instant-gratification, you fall into a permanent state of boredom, despite having so much to do.

I said this is a tragedy, and it really is. There is a love story, there is a sad ending, and a lot happens in between. I can't say much else without spoiling anything.

The book also has some parallels to Snow Crash. In Snow Crash, a man named Raven walks into a hackers-only club (called the "Black Sun") in the metaverse, and gives someone a virus, which causes their computer and body in the real world to go haywire. In Feed, an hacker walks in to a rave, and hacks everybody's feeds, causing their feeds to loose all functionality. Both of the scenes from these books are pretty early on, so I don't think I'm spoiling much.

All in all, Feed is a great book, and short enough that you could read it in a weekend, if you really wanted to. The book was written in 2001, and is scary to see how much closer we get the the world depicted in this book each and every day.

There are free PDF versions out there, you don't need to look too hard. Give it a good read, and if you don't like it, you can rest easy knowing you saved yourself a couple bucks. If you do like it, pick up a copy! I wish more people knew about this book. I don't hear it talked about, which makes me a little sad. Hopefully this post will spread the word.