What are you reading?

[koosie]

Originally Posted by Partymember

Yeah shes a good girl. I think Naked Lunch is about drugs or something (i honestly never looked at it) and her dad is a pretty messed up cokehead, so she might have thought it was a brilliant piece of work when it really wasn't. I ought to check it out. Whats "Child Garden" about, Koos?

Oh yeh Burroughs was a slave to heroin. Totally messed him up like it does everyone who ends up on it, takes away your pain while eating your life. It'd more likely be coke, crack or crystal meth these days. Sorry about your friend's dad. Same everywhere, some dealer getting rich off people suffering.

The Child Garden is a SF novel about London In I guess about 300 years time where the most significant difference (apart from the climate) is the advances bio-engineering. New structures are grown from coral (the old held up by bamboo) and babies are educated by virus so they're effectively programmed with all the information society thinks they need including behaviour programming. Sadly many of the children are orphans as a botched attempt to cure cancer has halved life expectancy. You'd like it I'm sure, theres a little bit of Zardoz in it as the main character Milena has to read the old books to catch up with what everyone else knows as she's immune to the viruses. It's actually a very nice book, full of love, friendship and flowers, and leaves you feeling very positive.