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

Hail the future of America! The moon, the 51st state, is an industrialized wasteland and not too different from Earth. The future is looking a little gray nowadays. The nation is cutting down the last of its trees to make room for the air factories. People are developing these lesions on their skin that turn out to be pretty cool when worn by the right celebrities. And the Feed continues to improve itself nicely, always striving to provide a better entertainment experience for those people who have taken the surgical step of progress.

Titus enjoys the Feed as much as the next teenage partier. Besides offering the latest product blurbs and news updates, it’s got everything you’d ever want in net surfing, music selection, and video streaming. The real question is: How did anyone ever live without it? If “the braggest thing about the feed...is that it knows everything you want and hope for, sometimes before you even know what those things are,” how can that be a bad thing? Isn’t that everyone’s greatest wish—To have their heart desires?

Therein lies the satirical beauty of M.T. Anderson’s FEED. With choice slang, Anderson constructs a believable future for our world, one where Beauty and Art have been lost in the grip of the Feednet society. As Titus grapples with typical teenage issues cleverly translated for the future, he’s forced to make the same decision we all have to make at some point—What are we going to let define us?

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