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Beautiful Soup
A novel set in the not-too-distant future about a reluctant rebel's defiance of his role in a bar coded society. A "small press" success story and something of a cult hit in the USA, also published in the UK and in German translation. Author Harvey Jacobs other books include American Goliath, The Juror, Summer On A Mountain Of Spices, The Egg of the Glak and other Stories. His stories appear in some 40+ anthologies ranging from "mainstream" to science fiction.
263 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1992
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About the author
Harvey Jacobs
67 books5 followersLibrarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_...
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_...
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 30, 2018
Written in 1990 when barcodes were just being placed on supemarket goods, this is a satire and dystopia in one.
A New York man with A+ barcode rating, like in Brave New World, with a fortunate life, has an accident while shopping and his barcoded forehead gets imprinted with the code for a can of low sodium pea soup. This is a social disaster since everyone in the world has to have a barcode and is forbidden to alter it. I would have liked to see how the man gets to interact with society some more, but he is soon taken out of society and put in a care home for social outcast prisoners.
If you took out all the references to body parts and bodily functions the book would be at least a quarter shorter. Sadly just about all the rest is garbage, and I don't just mean the floating barge of generations-old garbage that no port will accept. The writing seems to be that mid twentieth century New York style that some authors thought was amusing. It's not.
This is an unbiased review.
A New York man with A+ barcode rating, like in Brave New World, with a fortunate life, has an accident while shopping and his barcoded forehead gets imprinted with the code for a can of low sodium pea soup. This is a social disaster since everyone in the world has to have a barcode and is forbidden to alter it. I would have liked to see how the man gets to interact with society some more, but he is soon taken out of society and put in a care home for social outcast prisoners.
If you took out all the references to body parts and bodily functions the book would be at least a quarter shorter. Sadly just about all the rest is garbage, and I don't just mean the floating barge of generations-old garbage that no port will accept. The writing seems to be that mid twentieth century New York style that some authors thought was amusing. It's not.
This is an unbiased review.
October 25, 2012
You are what the bar code on your forehead says. Fates are randomly assigned at birth and all live relatively peaceably in this caste system until an unfortunate accident causes one of the "haves" to question everything. I really enjoyed it and have reread it several times.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews