National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson returns to future Earth in a sharply wrought satire of art and truth in the midst of colonization.When the vuvv first landed, it came as a surprise to aspiring artist Adam and the rest of planet Earth - but not necessarily an unwelcome one. Can it really be called an invasion when the vuvv generously offered free advanced technology and cures for every illness imaginable? As it turns out, yes. With his pa...
Details Landscape with Invisible Hand
| Title | Landscape with Invisible Hand |
|---|---|
| ISBN | 9780763687892 |
| Author | M.T. Anderson |
| Release Date | Sep 12th, 2017 |
| Publisher | Candlewick Press |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Young Adult, Science Fiction, Fiction, Dystopia, Humor |
| Rating |
Reviews Landscape with Invisible Hand
Futuristic satire so sharp I'm probably now bleeding internally in a few places. Novella-length short, would make a good YA classroom read - super discussable. And not 100% bleak. More like 80-20.
I got a copy of this signed for a friend who didn't like Feed. I loved Feed, so hoped that maybe he would like a different book by Anderson.After reading to page 57, I skipped to the end and am asking forgiveness from my friend. This was really quite bad.Setting/World. Takes place in the near-future, after benevolent, if business-minded (not benevolent if they only want $, just my two-cents) aliens come to Earth with amazing tech. That only the r...
Terrifying in how timely this is. Aliens invaded Earth, sure, but it's really more colonization than invasion. They've brought technologies, and automation! They will help the economy! Except that automation means fewer jobs, which means higher unemployment, and everything goes downhill accordingly. (This is why the "realistic" tag, despite the aliens.)Adam is an artist. He's struggling to support his family and be true to his own ideals. Whether...
Ever since I fell hard for Feed as a teenager, I’ve followed M.T. Anderson’s career. His repertoire is eclectic to say the least, regrouping children’s adventure novels, historical nonfiction, and award-winning YA. In Landscape with Invisible Hand, he returns to the lands of trenchant satire that I first discovered and adored so much in Feed. If he could write one of these tomes every single year, gradually taking on everything that ails us...
Woooooooooooooooooooooow"Feed" was the last M.T. Anderson book I read, and that was probably over a decade ago. Needless to say, I was beyond thrilled when I saw that he had some new material coming out in the fall. That said, it can also be a bit nerve racking when an author has been out of your life for so long. I mean, I loved "Feed" and Anderson's writing style is one of my favorites, but what if after so long, it just didn't have the same ef...
Another brilliant dystopian science fiction that hits pretty close to home. Sly, satirical, bleak and believable.
This was quite the interesting book. I am not really into science fiction, but this is more in the dystopian category I guess? Aliens have come to earth, they are called the vuvv. It isn't really an alien invasion, they landed and then they offered their advanced technology free to humans. However, with the advanced technology, comes a loss of jobs and a loss of money. However, these vuvv are obsessed with "classic" Earth culture, like 1950's typ...
“We are tiny figures, faceless, pointing at wonders, provided for scale, no lives of our own, surveying the landscape that has engulfed us all.”Grim! This book is extremely disheartening. Powerful, but wow! it brings ya down.When an alien race—the vuvv—first landed on earth offering technology and cures, humans jumped at the chance. BUT the consequences are now hitting home. Unemployment, sickness, poverty, and more start chipping away at...
Darkly funny, this alien colonisation story is a fantastic critique of market economics and the value of everything. M.T. Anderson is so great!
Interesting and unusual.
I adored this. It was a quick read, and should appeal to teens who like dystopias or bleak stories.
M.T. Anderson is a wizard who writes sharp, dark, painful visions of terrifying futures (and pasts) that are nevertheless hilarious and infused with heart and hope.
It was really well thought out and written. I liked how the vuvv were so different than the alien stereotype/ what we usually see. It was neat to see it all through an artist's perspective.
Science fiction is full of clichés about alien invasions of Earth, some evil, some benign. The murderous rampaging monsters that lay waste to the planet. The enigmatic species so different from the human race and so far advanced that communication with them is virtually impossible. The humanoid invaders who blend into contemporary society, either by morphing into human shape or because they themselves resemble human beings since we share common ...
An intelligent and short social commentary on a futuristic world where aliens have colonize Earth and Adam, the artistic child in the family who has lost their jobs due to the aliens automating everything is trying to earn some money. Well, aliens like watching love, so Chloe, who lives in the house now and him make some money. Adam also paints and his landscapes are plot points that move the story along. I must say that sometimes I don't "get" A...
A great YA book about how aliens have basically already invaded. Commercialism and all that.
My AP Economics class was finally worth something! This was a quick and fantastic read that worked in allegory and literalism to paint (no pun intended) a scary--but not altogether unrealistic--image of the future. It was poignant, humorous, honest, and it had aliens. What more could you want? It had me cyclically racking my brain for allusions to free market theories, laughing at not-so-subtle digs at rich Conservatives (in the town I work, no l...
As usual, I found Anderson's writing tough to read but well worth the pain.
In this slim novel, Adam is an artist trying to help his family make ends meet after the vuuv, an alien race has arrived on Earth and ruined it through economic means. It's certainly an original premise and spurs questions such as: what is art? what is the value of art? of health? of integrity? It's not my favorite by Anderson, but it's definitely worth a read. Review from galley.
I got an ARC of this at BookExpo and it's such a slim novel (also I love all of MT Anderson's other work) that it moved to the top of my reading list. It's a really quick, thought-provoking read — at times funny and sad. The text is sparse yet evocative. Every sentence is necessary and beautiful with not a word out of place. When the vuuv come to Earth, they provide advanced technology and manufacturing and medicine — and thus wipe out the wo...
As has doubtless become clear in my Goodreads reviews, Anderson is one of my favorite writers, and this George Saunders-esque exploration of a near-future Earth colonized by coffee-table-shaped aliens known as "vuvv" is both dark and powerful. In the vein of Feed, the teenage voice is usually aware of less of the implications of what he is saying than the author is, though in this case, unlike the enclosing narcissism of the Feed narrator, Adam's...
"We all have to find some way to live with the world as it is now."When the vuvv first landed they told humanity that they could cure all illnesses. No one would have to work anymore. New technology would change lives.It should have been perfect.But no one thought about what no one working would mean for the economy. No one considered that all of this wondrous technology would be behind a pay wall. The early adopters--the ones who could buy into ...
This is a story narrated by Adam Costello, a teenage artist living in a near-future Rhode Island. An alien race called the vuvv have made contact with Earth, bringing amazing technology, lifesaving medicine -- and completely destroying the human economy. The vast majority of jobs are now obsolete, and while a few rich people live in floating cities among the clouds, most humans live in misery, struggling to find anything to eat, drinking contamin...
M.T. Anderson's Landscape with Invisible Hand is an incisive look at human nature. Every detail of the transformation the human race goes through during the alien colonization is an accurate reflection of the many times peoples and nations were colonized by others here on Earth. Just like the economic class divide that grows exponentially when a peoples is colonized by a greater force, the human race suffers a great divide when the vuvv, the supe...
M.T. Anderson (whose full name is Matthew Tobin Anderson) is best known for being a National Book Award-winning author of children’s and young adult fiction. His latest novel, Landscape with Invisible Hand, is a return to a Future Earth impacted by an alien invasion, his first novel in this setting since Feed in 2002. This is a short novel, readable in about two hours, that details how an alien species known as a vuvv has taken over Earth by me...
M.T. Anderson makes a return to satirical science fiction in this yet-to-be published novel (novella?). An alien species, the vuvv, landed on Earth years ago, offering an end to work and disease. How could the human race turn down promises like those? It doesn't. Flash forward several years later and find that an end to work is only good if money isn't necessary (which it still is) and an end to disease is only useful if one can afford it (very, ...
Thank you to NetGalley and Candlewick Press for sending me an Advanced Reader Copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. I requested this book because I recently read Feed by MT Anderson and I enjoyed it so I thought I should give this book a chance, too. While I didn't like Landscape with Invisible Hand as much as I did Feed, this book does have its moments.This book started strong but got a little muddled along the way, as if it didn...
The author of Feed returns to dystopian science fiction in this short and thrillingly sharp novel. Adam can remember the time before the vuvv came to Earth. They brought technologies, medical breakthroughs, and new money for the economy. But as everything was replaced with alien technology, it moved behind a pay wall that made clean water, medical treatment and safe housing impossible for most humans to afford. The lucky wealthy humans live in fl...
M.T. Anderson uses an alien invasion (or colonization) to make some profound statements on colonialism, cultural appropriation, artistic expression, and free market capitalism. Adam, our narrator and protagonist, takes the reader through a kind of museum tour of his works with each chapter focusing around a different piece of artwork; its inspiration and context. While the artwork is the primary focus, each landscape sketch or painting reveals th...