Feed

In this chilling novel, Anderson 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 is all streamlining our personalities so we're easier to sell to." "Chats" flow privately from mind to mind; Titus flies an "upcar"; and, after Titus and his friends develop lesions, banner ads and sit-coms dub the lesions the newest hot trend. Titus proves a believably flawed hero, and ultimately the novel's greatest strength lies in his denial of and uncomfortable awakening to the...

Publishers Weekly

In this chilling novel, Anderson imagines a society dominated by the feed-a next-generation Internet/television hybrid that is directly hardwired into the brain. In a starred review, PW called this a "thought-provoking and scathing indictment of corporate-and media-dominated culture." Ages 14-up. (Mar.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

M. T. Anderson is on the faculty of Vermont College’s MFA Program in Writing for Children. He is the author of the novels THIRSTY and BURGER WUSS, and the picture-book biography HANDEL, WHO KNEW WHAT HE LIKED. He says of FEED, "To write this novel, I read a huge number of magazines like SEVENTEEN, MAXIM, and STUFF. I eavesdropped on conversations in malls, especially when people were shouting into cell phones. Where else could you get lines like, ‘Dude, I think the truffle is totally undervalued’?"