If you're tired of dystopia...

 

I realized some months ago while looking at my reading record for the year that I seem to currently have an obsession with science-fiction. Who would have thought?! While I've never really gotten into space and alien stories, I can't get enough of time travel and future societies! But let's face it, future societies almost always mean a dystopia, and while I love dystopian fiction and the stories of characters foraging ahead and fighting to get their humanity back, they can be depressing and dark if that's all you read! Insert The Future of Us by Jay Asher & Carolyn Mackler, a humorous science-fiction tale that has the ability to resonate with the high schooler in all of us!

Instead of a sinister tale of a bleak future for mankind, the reader peers into the inner turmoil that we all carry around regardless of age. That nagging worry of what our personal futures hold. Will I be happy? Will I land my dream job? What is my dream job? Will I meet my perfect match? What will my children be like? Will I have children? The list goes on an on and is ever changing at each stage of our lives! The novel follows Emma and Josh, high school students in 1996. When they upload AOL onto Emma's new personal computer, they are immediately taken to a strange website called Facebook. Since Facebook hasn't been invented yet, the two get a tiny glimpse of their lives ten years in the future. They become obsessive about checking their posts and finding out who they are married to and whether or not they are happy with the way life turned out. Emma thinks she isn't happy in the future and sets out to change it. As Emma bases her current decisions on what she thinks her future holds, she effectively 'messes up' Josh's perfect future life with the prettiest (and wealthiest) girl in high school. Josh, of course, isn't very happy with the changes that Emma causes and they must decide if knowing the future before it happens is desirable or healthy.

Nearly every page in this book was a piece of nostalgia for me! It brought me back to my own high school experience. I was a senior in 1996, and I remember the familiar scratchy sound of a computer connecting to the Internet. I didn't even start using email until my sophomore year of college. The pop culture references made by Emma and Josh transported me back to high school when a particular song received plenty of play time on the radio or a technology was new and exciting. Beyond the way the authors made me recall a time in my life that I rarely reminisce on, the central theme of making decisions and fretting over the future still hit home even 16 years after high school graduation. Asher and Mackler couldn't help themselves and are clearly commenting on our society today and our willingness to over share extremely personal as well as the mundane details of our lives. Emma wonders that her future self would post something as inane as eating macaroni and cheese for dinner and is horrified that she would discuss her unhappiness in marriage for all to see on the Internet. I myself am grossly guilty of sharing the silly details of my life on Facebook under the guise that someone cares what I made for dinner.

My how our lives have changed! I can't really be the only one who writes a post about a restaurant or bar I'm at in the hopes of making a friend 'jealous' so they will write a snarky and funny comment that will lead to fun banter back and forth!