"Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei
Led us to this perfect day."
In the spirit of George Orwell's 1984, 'This Perfect Day' gives us a glimpse of life in the future. There are human outposts on other planets. The cities of Earth are filled with parks, scanners, government appointed jobs and families, and bracelet wearing, drug numbed Members.
Everything is run by Uni....the unified government made up of a gigantic computer compound. Uni dictates your schooling, job, living arrangements, names (they've whittled it down to 4 for each sex) attached to numbers (namebers), the sex life of the Members, and freedom of movement throughout the continents. Big Brother is present in this instance........because the members are drugged monthly, or more often, with drugs that make them 'healthy'. The drugs cause the Members to rat each other out, be satisfied with once a week sex (which they call f ing), never question Uni, and lead productive lives void of feeling, and then kills them at the age of 62.
Chip begins to 'question' Uni when his grandfather draws attention to the fact that Uni 'appears' to be one thing, but in reality is something much more cold and sinister. It takes Chip years to even get near breaking away, or having an 'awakening' because every Member is plugged full of drugs that won't let them question the authority of Uni. And even if they did, all of the other Members would turn them in for being 'sick'.
After many years and life altering set backs, Chip feels that he has successfully escaped the life Uni had planned for him. In a creepy turn of events, he finds that all he has worked for, may in fact be just what Uni wanted him to do.
Fantastic read! This is one of my favorite genres. I enjoyed Levin's take on future government control. By the end it was feeling fragmented, which may have come from Chips break with being sedated....but it didn't seem to flow as well.
Rating 4.5
Rating R Sex, crude language.
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