Pretties

Pretties, by Scott Westerberg, appeared to be the sort of book I would hate. It's part of a wildly popular series (does nobody write single books that can stand alone anymore?), and the main characters are supermodel attractive. So I had to read it to see just how bad it was. It turns out to be a very gripping futuristic sci-fi book. Actually, the emphasis on physical attractiveness is portrayed negatively. It's a dystopic novel, meaning it imagines a future where advances in technology create a seemingly perfect world, but one where people are controlled and don't live full lives. It's the opposite of a utopia, where society's problems have been eliminated and everybody is happy. In a dystopia, as in this series, 1984 by George Orwell, or Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, society's problems have been eliminated, but the soul of life has been killed. However, Tally, the main character, only slowly realizes this.
These sorts of novels always raise a series of questions. What cost is worth resulting peace? Is an absence of strife the same as harmony and co-existence? If somebody engineers all this, for as we saw in Jurassic Park, it takes a lot of work to thwart nature and the natural impulses, how do those people live and carry out their orders? Most of the time, a dystopic society only succeeds because most of the people are blissfully unaware. However, somebody must be very aware of what is going on. Why do those people never revolt? What do human beings want? Would it be possible to satisfy everybody with one system? If people don't know what they are sacrificing, are they really missing out?