Feed

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M.T. Anderson's novel Feed was very interesting. It is set in the future where people can take a vacation to the moon or other trips in space. In the novel the kids are on spring break and they decide to go to the moon for their vacation. The kids were guided by the feed in their heads that they received at birth. The author has created a vision of what life will be like in the future, and the language will involve a lot of slang. The author builds his own reality using the possibility of what the future may hold.

There are many different things that the author made his own. For example, life on the moon is one major thing that is not likely to happen in the near future. The author made it seem as though life on the moon had been around for centuries. The moon had hotels, and clubs where parties were thrown. The kids in the book went to a place called the Rumble Spot, and they also went to the Ricochet Lounge. While they were there all of the kids got hacked except for one. This cause them to have to disconnect from the feed.

The feed is a system that is inserted into everyone's brain at birth. The feed is like their own personal internet in their heads. It had anything from social media to a dictionary and they could access it at any time. The kids would even chat using the feed. They used it for GPS, finding a place to stay, and communication. For example, when they got to the moon Titus was talking about the feed and he said "When we got off the ship, our feeds were going to fugue with all the banners" (pg 8) The banners were the ads that gave the kids ideas about where they may want to visit. The author has created his own type of language in this reality also.

The next thing that the author made his own was the language in the novel. The language was a little different that what most are used to. He used a lot of slang in his novel especially when the characters were speaking. The characters would use words such as "whatev" "null" or "meg." An example of this would be when they were in the Ricochet Louge, a no gravity or low gravity place, playing and Link was upset because he does not like losing. So he looks at Marty and says "This is null, this sucks" (pg 13). These are just a few examples of how the language differs in the novel.

Overall, this novel was decent. It was not my favorite because of the language. Every time the author would use one of the slang words, I would have to stop and re-read the sentence. I liked that the fact the novel was based in the future, and the technology was so advanced.  I also struggled with when they were chatting on the feed, and when they were speaking out loud. I had to go back and make sure that I was reading it correctly.

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