Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick.

Discussions about possibly dreaming androids ahead.  Spoilers!

Stopped in the Middle

I had to stop "Feed" and "Time Traveler's Wife" in the middle so I could return them to the library where other folks are waiting for them.  Kind of frustrating, but not entirely unexpected.  I stopped reading "Time Traveler's Wife" because I could tell I was getting to a possibly sad part and, as I was only about a hundred pages from the end, would prefer to sit down and read it all the way through instead of in smaller chunks of sadness. I waited too long.  I own a copy already, and so am waiting for another to become available at the library.  (Do I have any idea where my copy is?  No.  This is a common theme in my life, and I generally take the path of least resistance and just get it out of the library. Someday I'll have a real home library, etc, etc, etc.)

Anyway, "Feed" had 5 holds and there was no way I was going to finish it, so I returned it and am now trying to talk myself into buying a digital copy for my G Tablet through Amazon or B&N.  $7.99.  That seems a lot for a bunch of pixels (I know, I know, I'm paying the author, and the editor, etc, which I totally believe in, but I still wonder where all that money is going). However, I am something of an advocate for ebooks (I've owned an ereader since 1999), and I need to learn to suck it up and pay for the books. (Any books I've paid for in the past that I haven't produced myself from online text I've bought at Baen http://www.baen.com/, which sells SF/F at incredible prices.) The paper "Feed" is one of the large mass markets and costs $9.99 anyway, so the ebook is $2.00 less than the cheapest paper copy, and I really don't want to bring much more paper into my house.  Tonight I will buy the e and I'll enjoy it, damnit!

"Feed" by Mira Grant

I'm currently reading "Feed," book 1 of the NewsFlesh series, by Mira Grant for my SF readers' advisory presentation at the Minnesota Library Association (MLA) conference this year. This is the thinking person's zombie novel, and I'm really enjoying it.  So far there's discussion of zombies, and a really SF discussion - disease origins and vectors, the progression of the disease, and other effects of the virus.  However, the book is mostly about the social effects of the existence of the infected; what would it be like to live in a world with this horrible "super" disease that just won't go away? The actual summer of the rise of the disease happens 30 years before the start of the book. 

We're now following a political campaign which looks distressingly familiar - hard to pick a winner at the beginning because many of the canditates are just scary and the one who might be worthwhile - who knows?  I find I've become more politically cynical than I thought - I keep waiting for the author's "chosen" candidate to screw up and lose his political charm. 

There's also a lot of discussion of the news and news vendors.  Bloggers are regulated and a force to be reckoned with, yet are still proving themselves as "legitimate" news sources. 

There're also political conspiracies and zombie attacks and and and....

I'm really enjoying this, and I didn't think I would.  This novel is intelligent and thoughtful which makes it a hit with me. 

I hope the rest of it lives up to the beginning and the rest of the series does too.

Mira Grant's website: http://www.miragrant.com/  Unfortunately not very up to date.  Still has Deadline as coming soon, although they have a picture of the cover I'm seeing on Amazon.