"Jon"
by George Saunders, 2003
This is not a novel, but a lengthy short story published in The New Yorker and can be considered a novellete.
The author creates a world that is both disturbingly different from ours, and yet still incredibly familiar. He tells a compelling tale of two young people who make hard decisions in hopes of finding themselves.
It is a story about a boy, Jon, and a girl, Carolyn, who have lived their lives in a facility where they rate commercial items with their brain-implanted advertisement-testing devices. They are treated like celebrities.
They fall in love. Carolyn becomes pregnant, and they request to exit the facility. The brain-implanted devices along with the gargadisk and other related electronic implants are removed as part of the exit process with the knowledge that they will have diminished intelligence and visible physical deformations.
An ode to the classic, Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes.
Keywords: Sex; Teen-agers; Masturbation; Love Affairs; Science Fiction; Babies - General; Death
My rating: ★★★☆☆ (3 out of 5 stars)
The short story can be read here:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/01/27/jon
