Feed by Mira Grant
Feed is the
first novel in Mira Grant’s Newsflesh trilogy. I first learned about it through Tina at One More Page, and I actually won it during her raffle. (So, thanks again, Tina!). It is zombie novel, yes. But it's
not so much about the zombies as a discussion of the role of new media. At
least, that's how I choose to look at it. Let me illustrate...
The story
is set 26 years after the supposed cure for the common cold becomes a virus
that turns humans into—you guessed it—zombies. This plot device is hardly new,
and has been used by many zombie novels and movies. There are, however, things
I found new. For instance, in Feed, society goes on mostly as usual after the
zombie apocalypse. Except that people take more precaution in where they live
and whenever they go out in public.
You see,
the virus, cutely named Kellis-Amberlee, has infected everyone, but it lies
dormant until the person is exposed to greater concentrations of the virus, or
until one dies. If you get more than your fair share of the virus, you begin to
turn. Which means that the ordinary guy sitting next to you in the cinema may
turn into a flesh-eating monster by the end of the movie. This is why people
tend not to go out in public anymore, and when they do, they subject themselves
to numerous blood tests before entering any establishment and before eventually
entering back into their own homes.
Enter
Georgia and Shaun, adopted children of former academics-turned-media-whores.
Except we’re talking about the new media here. ‘Cause, really, what other form
of media will flourish if most everyone wants to stay indoors? I mean, if the
internet was designed so that it could survive a nuclear war (along with the
roaches), it’d be most likely to survive a zombie apocalypse, don’t you think?
Anyway,
to cut a long story short, Georgia and Shaun are, like their parents, part of
the new media. They are bloggers, yet unlike their parents, they blog for the
love of the news, and not for the ratings or clickthroughs. Not
counterintuitively, this actually gives them greater credibility among their
peers, so much so that they’ve been invited by the Democrat’s presidential
candidate to join his campaign. And, as these stories go, in the process of
covering the campaign trail, Georgia and Shaun begin to uncover a greater conspiracy.
Oh, and let’s not forget the zombie attacks, cause there are several.
I just
looked at my summary up above, and I guess it reiterates how I think about
this book. I liked the zombie action, I did. Perhaps because it wasn’t overdone.
But, mostly, I keep thinking about the use of the new media when I think about
this book. Maybe it’s because I blog. Maybe it’s because I’m currently taking
up a Media course. Maybe it’s because I saw some parallels in the world today.
First, in
Feed’s world, bloggers are classified into Newsies, those who report straight
news, Stewarts, those who mix opinion with the news, Irwins, those who video
themselves doing something dangerous, like go head to head with the zombies,
Fictionals, the creative writers, and Aunties, the ones who talk about their
lives, recipes, and other leisure activities, I guess. I would probably belong
to the Aunties, which means I wouldn’t be in this book, because, in Feed, you
tend to equate the term “blogger” with “news blogger.” Strangely, in one of our textbooks, 2010 edition, for the Media Comm course, a “blogger” is limited to
someone who blogs about the news. I was a bit thrown off because I stumbled
into this world where I seem to be marginalized because I’m not a news blogger.
Nevertheless, it seems news bloggers aren’t also exempted from checking their
stats once in a while. At least, in Feed, it seems it’s one of the major
preoccupations of the bloggers. Again, strangely, they don’t rely on SEO. Just
content. Pretty refreshing, if you ask me.
The other
thing that got me thinking as I was reading Feed was the similarity to many of
the things happening today. In fact, while reading this zombie book, I wasn’t
thinking, “Hey, what if this did happen?” Instead, I found myself thinking, “Hey,
isn’t this how it’s happening now?” Not the zombies, obviously, but the sudden
reliance on new media versus traditional media, usually brought about by a
great crisis. In Feed, the virus outbreak that resulted in the death of 3/4s of
the world’s population led to people’s mistrust of traditional media because
they felt it didn’t respond quickly enough to what was
happening, didn’t report the deaths, didn’t do their jobs to inform the public.
Hence, people turned to new media. This sort of reflects what happened after
9/11. I’m not an American, but like most of the world, I was glued to the
television, watching in horror, while trying to get a hold of my brother in New
York, just to make sure he was ok. He was and is, thankfully.
Anyway, after
9/11, it seemed that a lot of people felt that traditional media and mainstream
press left them ill-prepared. People asked where the hate was coming from,
because there didn’t seem to be much coverage of international events or how
the other parts of the world felt about the US. So, because a lot of people were
disappointed with mainstream media, they turned to blogs, which told the truth
and provided commentary and evidence. And, apparently, during the war on Iraq,
lots of blogs showed firsthand accounts of the battle, like this one. Sort of like what an
Irwin does.
And then
I think about now, when presidential candidates do include a few bloggers in
their campaign trail, even in our country. Most recently, I know of two
official bloggers for our president’s State of the Nation Address last month. And
I think, “Yay for new media!”
So, yes,
Feed made me think. For that, I found it a good book. It made me cringe during
the zombie attacks. That makes it good, too. And though I would’ve wanted the
sample blog posts from Georgia and Shaun to have more meat, the writing of the
main narrative didn’t get in the way of the story. It made me want to keep
turning pages to find out what happened next. That’s always good. And, in the
end, it shocked me because it did something rarely done by writers in the first
book of a trilogy. For that, it earned my respect.
You can
read it as a zombie book or a commentary on new media. Either way, Feed is a
powerful book, and anyone who's read through till the end will understand why.
Comments