Ubalblog

[  Mood: Sick ]
[  Currently: Listening to CBC Radio ]
So the Hunger Games is popular right now. And there are lots of people tossing around titles for people to read after they have finished Collins work. And believe me, there are many worthy followers, but what about a book that came before the Hunger Games? One that explores some of the same themes, but goes in a very, very different direction.

It’s 2154, and the world is a dystopian mess. Many years ago, some apocalyptic event occurred that caused the population to drop to a point that there was a lack of workers. To fill this need, governments created robots to do menial work. These robots began to get better, able to handle more complex work. This meant that as the population recovered, there was no work for them to do. Permanent classes of unemployed were created, living off government hand outs.

Into this world is born Lisse. As a child of an unemployed family, she is taken from her parents at the age of six to be educated. But with the robots taking more and more jobs, she too ends up Unemployed at the age of sixteen. Dropped off in the Designated Area in which she is now to live, Lisse bands together with a group of seven friends to survive their new world of gangs, drugs, garish clothes and government crackdowns.

But then one day, an invitation arrives for the group to attend the mysterious Game. With nothing else to do, they go and are exposed to a treasure hunt in a new world that seems too real to be true. Each return finds them wanting to do better and learn more. They devote a great deal of time to preparing for their next session. And then one day, it turns out the Game may have been all too real.

Author Monica Hughes’s work was published in 1991, and it shows a world where technology is replacing man in insidious ways. A precursor to works like the Hunger Games, there is a very socialist theme to this book, that big government may know better than we think it does. And the Utopian view that the children, when given a chance, can build a better world out of the ashes of our own.

It has aged very well and is worth the look.