Landscape with Invisible Hand

by M. T. Anderson Narrated by M. T. Anderson

Overview

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 parents' jobs replaced by alien tech and no money for food, clean water, or the vuvv's miraculous medicine, Adam and his girlfriend, Chloe, have to get creative to survive. And since the vuvv crave anything they deem classic Earth culture (doo-wop music, still life paintings of fruit, true love), recording 1950s-style dates for the vuvv to watch in a pay-per-minute format seems like a brilliant idea. But it's hard for Adam and Chloe to sell true love when they hate each other more with every passing episode. Soon enough, Adam must decide how far he's willing to go-and what he's willing to sacrifice-to give the vuvv what they want.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

In short vignettes titled as if they are pieces of fine art, the bleakness of this new reality is expertly rendered...Resplendent with Anderson's trademark dry, sarcastic wit, this brief, complicated read serves as a scathing social commentary and, as the title indicates, an interrogation of free market economics.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Some fear that hyper-capitalist technocrats, under the guise of altruism and progress, are fleecing the world; Anderson (Feed, 2002) stretches this premise to deliriously enjoyable extremes...Throw in a romantic rival, an interplanetary art contest, and plenty of scintillating details about the Lovecraftian horrors of the vuvv, and you’ve got the makings of an elegant, biting, and hilarious social satire that will appeal to dissatisfied, worried readers of all ages.
—Booklist (starred review)

Anderson takes issues of colonialism, ethnocentrism, inequality, and poverty and explodes them on a global, even galactic, scale. A remarkable exploration of economic and power structures in which virtually all of humanity winds up the losers.
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

This sharp, compelling, slim volume packs a punch. Anderson’s vivid world could be a mirror for many American communities today...Despite the heavy subject material and pervading sense of doom, the book ends on a hopeful note, making this a solid choice for a variety of readers. An engrossing, speculative look at life in the margins, this is a first purchase for libraries serving teens.
—School Library Journal (starred review)

Parable, satire, dystopic sci-fi—Anderson’s take on a near future in which alien “vuvv” have colonized America’s economy, land, and airspace has so many shiveringly close resemblances to the contemporary world that it might also be termed “realism.”...Anderson’s prose is almost hyper-lucid here—appropriately so, as the story is structured around Adam’s descriptions of his paintings. Practically every word reflects a prescient, bitingly precise critique of contemporary human folly, of economic and environmental inequities and absurdities.
—The Horn Book (starred review)

M.T. Anderson (Feed; Symphony for the City of the Dead) has written a biting satire about the world's haves and have-nots, set in an increasingly stratified near-future where the human race has, for the most part, become expendable. It's a strange and wonderful fantasy about seeking love amid the filth, and keeping hope alive, despite unquestionable odds against it.
—Shelf Awareness for Readers (starred review)

Anderson's down-and-out in the post-scarcity world is a scorching, arch, hilarious and ultimately very moving little parable about the cult of markets and the elevation of corporatism over human kindness. It's as zeitgeisty as Feed ever was, and such a compact little gem of a book that you very well might read it in one sitting, as I did.
—Cory Doctorow

Ultimately, though, I don’t read J.K. Rowling — or M.T. Anderson, or Ursula K. Leguin — because of what their books have to tell me about life. I read them because these writers have mastered the ancient magic of storytelling, and because they remind me of what it’s like to be young, living in a world that seems both simple and incomprehensible.
—The New York Times

In the near sci-fi future envisioned by M.T. Anderson in his slim and coruscating young-adult novel ‘Landscape With Invisible Hand,’ human adolescents flirt and banter for the pay-per-view pleasure of earth’s new overlords, a squat species of alien known as the vuvv…In this bitter, witty story for readers ages 14 and older, Adam’s only hope seems to lie in winning a lucrative trans-galactic art prize—until he hits on an even more radical solution.
—The Wall Street Journal

Anderson’s vision of alien invaders is captivating.
—Entertainment Weekly

In this novella, National Book Award winner M.T. Anderson writes a multilayered and scathing satire...It's a bleak but necessary lesson in trying to find the beauty in the disastrous, all while learning to recognize when it's time to dream a new dream.
—BookPage

A fantastic new satire from M.T. Anderson...equal parts humor and philosophical rumination.
—Boston Globe

Fans of Feed will be intrigued to follow the development of Anderson’s dystopic imagination into this similarly themed futuristic critique of the present.
—Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

A slim, stark, brilliant cultural commentary...a satirical portrait of the artist as a young man and a resonant portrait of contemporary society.
—Globe and Mail

Short, pointed commentary on art, politics and aliens! Funny and tense.
—SF Gate

Reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut on a satirical roll.
—San Francisco Chronicle

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2017-05-15
Humans inhabit the bottom echelons in this brief satirical novel of alien invasion that envisions a scenario more whimper than bang. Adam, a talented artist, lives with his mother and sister after his father abandons the family. When the 1950s-culture-obsessed vuvv landed years before, people were taken in by their promises to supply advanced technology and medicine, not understanding that they'd soon be obsolete, impoverished, and, like Adam, who suffers from a debilitating intestinal illness, without any means to pay for medical care. In short vignettes titled as if they are pieces of fine art, the bleakness of this new reality is expertly rendered—as in an early chapter in which his mother is roughed up by a fellow job seeker who threatens to burn her "motherfucking house down" if she persists in applying for the same part-time position. When they decide to rent out part of their house to another family, Adam and their daughter, Chloe, fall for each other. Monetizing their connection by broadcasting their 1950s-styled romance for the vuvv becomes mightily complicated when the relationship sours. The ethnicities of the main characters are not specified—the only time race is textually indicated is a passage where white people are shown rioting on television and blaming Mexican workers for stealing their jobs—but references to European art and the way Adam and Chloe slide into a clichéd movie vision of the 1950s both imply they are white and add further layers of interpretive complexity to the book. Resplendent with Anderson's trademark dry, sarcastic wit, this brief, complicated read serves as a scathing social commentary and, as the title indicates, an interrogation of free market economics. (Science fiction. 14-adult)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169939033
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	09/12/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

Read an Excerpt

A Small Town
Under the Stars
 
Under the stars, a small town prepares for night. It is almost eleven o’clock. Down in the boxy houses, ­people are settling in for bed. Car headlights crawl through the tiny streets. The bright streetlamps on the ­town’s main drag illuminate empty parking. The businesses are closed for the day. The hills are dark.
   All of this is seen by two teens up on some ledge, on a road called Lovers’ Lane.
   They’re parked in a fifties fin car and “necking.” She’s in a tight sweater; he’s in a Varsity jacket. The view over their town, the place they grew up, makes them sentimental, and they grind together over the gearshift. “Gee, Brenda,” says the boy.
    All of this is seen by the creature in the bushes.
   Stems of some kind of terrestrial growth block his ­goggle-­eyed vision. He sweeps the branches away with a claw. He observes the two hairy snacks writhing in their metal box and wonders what their mashing together could mean. His breath is loud. With an unsteady lunge, he moves forward. Branches snap. He is on the pavement. He is beside the car.
   All of this is seen by hundreds of teens, watching in horror.
   Boyfriends and girlfriends squeal and lean into each other. ­Couples grin. They’re parked in fifties fin cars and “necking.” The movie screen above the field of parked cars is reflected in their windshields.
   Of course, when the interstellar invasion came, it looked nothing like that.
 
A Small Town
at the Foot of the Rendering Sails
 
There is no full night in our town because the rendering sails of the vuvv stretch high into the air and glow with a dull yellow light. My girlfriend Chloe and I are lying on the grass next to the school gym, watching the sails up in the sky ­ripple in some ­invisible electromagnetic tide.
   Gazing upward together, we hold hands and I say, “It’s so beautiful.” I think for a minute and then say, “Like your hair. Blowing.”
   “Adam,” she says, “that’s a ­really nice thing to say.”
   “Yeah,” I agree, and I tilt my head so it’s leaning on her shoulder. “Gee, Chloe,” I say, and turn to kiss her cheek.
 
As it happens, Chloe and I hate each other. Still, my head is next to hers, which I would gladly, at this point, twist off with my bare hands.
All of this is seen by hundreds of vuvv, paying per minute.
 
The Landing Site:
A Statue of Glass Pillars
in Wrigley Field,
Chicago, Illinois
 
I’ve never been to see the Vuvv First Landing Site. We all saw the landing on television when it happened, though, and for a school project in eighth grade I drew the monument that was built there on Wrigley Field. I used colored pencils and copied the picture off a cheap hologram bookmark. It was one of the first times I tried hard to draw clear glass. When I look at my drawing now, I can see a lot of the mistakes I made in getting the reflections and distortions right. The pillars look bent just because I ­didn’t know how to do perspective well yet.
   We were all surprised when the vuvv landed the first time. They’d been watching us since the 1940s, and we’d seen them occasionally, but we had all imagined them differently. They weren’t slender and delicate, and they weren’t humanoid at all. They looked more like granite coffee tables: squat, wide, and rocky. We were just glad they weren’t invading. We ­couldn’t believe our luck when they offered us their tech and invited us to be part of their Interspecies ­Co-­Prosperity Alliance. They announced that they could end all work forever and cure all disease, so of course, the leaders of the world all rushed to sign up.
   For a year or so after the first landing, one of their ships hovered above Wrigley Field to mark the spot where they first greeted us. Now the ­ship’s gone, and there are luxury condos floating there instead. Everyone complains, because they block the sun, which was supposed to fall on the glass columns of the Vuvv First Landing Monument.
   A few years ago, some guy in cargo pants was caught tipping over one of the monument’s pillars. At first, everyone thought he was doing it as an ­anti-­vuvv protest. Later, it turned out he was just a douche.

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