Title: 2033: The Future of Misbehavior Author: Nerve.com staff, editor Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press Publish Date: 2007 Pages: 197 Genres:: Fiction, Bisexual, Fantasy Reviewer: Chris R. Morgan

Rating:

The ever forward-thinking Nerve.com editors have innovated a way to corporate funders while not detracting from the overall theme of the project itself which, like the creepy robot mascot of Svedka, 2033 contains a good amount of technology, absurdity, oddball sex appeal and mass culture overload. However, the pages are not armed without the finest wits of modern fiction, nonfiction and satire. There are many ways in which one can envision the future, the most popular idea, which won Cormac McCarthy a Pulitzer and Oprah's undying love, includes the most bombastic and interactive fireworks display the US, China, Pakistan, possibly Iran, Russia and so forth, could offer. These writers, not known for going with the grain, have offered an alternative that is not anymore pleasant than leaving a permanent shadow, but it is kind of funny.

To put it simply, everything about modern pop culture, excess and sociology get rearranged, reversed or exaggerated and meets every possible subVonnegutian sci-fi satirical concept ever hatched. According to the likes of Ana Marie Cox, Joel Stein, Amanda Boyden and Rachel Shukert, celebriphilia is nowhere near as bloated and distracting as it is now. Families openly participate in tabloid journalism by creating their own scandals. Hollywood human sewage such as the Hilton Sisters, Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie have scholarships in their names to fund an upcoming generation of fuck-ups. People magazine is some cruel deity. That is a mere sampling. The stories poke fun by expanding twentyfold modern civilization's obsession with age, plastic surgery (now socialized in the future), dating (with people of different planets), religion and so forth. Some stories apply the taboos (though they really aren't taboo) of today as accepted tomorrow. Walter Kirn's future has a lesbian president. Jay McInerney's incisive wit shows how breaking through the glass ceiling makes female empowerment become a variation on a familiar perversion. Rick Moody's narrator offers economic growth by bringing porn back to Times Square. 

For the hip few who have seen Mike Judge's Idiocracy, this might come off as a more literate, intellectual take on part of the film's main thesis, and they wouldn't be entirely mistaken. It's a good thing someone like Will Self is not an established futurist, for if these visions be true, those who still enjoy reading, or thinking in general, may want to hope that all the loose morals and excess will also include legalized euthanasia. But all clownish doom and gloom aside, Nerve simply asks that the trendy potential reader of today not go out and get shitfaced, but instead lightly sip from (of course) a vodka mix and just enjoy the folly that has yet to invade our tender psyche and, hence, is still amusing.