Stupid Perfect World

By Scott Westerfeld

In this future-set novella by bestselling author Scott Westerfeld, Kieran Black lives in a "perfect" world. Disease and starvation have been eradicated, sleep is unnecessary, and it takes no time at all to go from the Bahamas to the moon. But now Kieran has to take Scarcity, a class about how people lived in the bad old days. And as if sitting through an hour of Scarcity every day wasn't depressing enough, it's final projects time. Each student must choose some form of ancient hardship to experience for two whole weeks. Kieran chooses having to sleep eight hours a night, which doesn't seem too annoying.

Maria Borsotti has never thought much of Kieran, but she decides to take pity on him and help him out with his project. Soon, Kieran is sleeping and having vivid dreams, while Maria, whose Scarcity project is to give up all teenage hormone regulation, is experiencing emotions she never knew she had. As their assignments draw them closer together, they begin to wonder if the olden days weren't so bad. Maybe something has been missing from their perfect lives after all?

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• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperTeen
• Release date: Dec 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9780062244079

Scott Westerfeld

Scott Westerfeld is the author of ten books for young adults, including Peeps, The Last Days, and the Midnighters trilogy. He was born in Texas in 1963, is married to the Hugo-nominated writer Justine Larbalestier, and splits his time between New York and Sydney. His latest book is Extras, the fourth in the bestselling Uglies series.

Book preview

One

LIKE MOST DAYS, I was barely on time for Scarcity class.

It wasn’t a real course with grades and everything, so only the most pathetic meekers worked hard at it. The rest of us just showed up and tried not to fall asleep. Nobody wanted to fail, of course, because that meant repeating: another long semester of watching all those olden-day people starving and being diseased. At least regular History has battles; Scarcity was just depressing.

So when I walked in and saw what Mr. Solomon had written on the antique chalkboard, I groaned out loud.

FINAL PROJECT PROPOSALS DUE TODAY.

Forget something, Kieran? That was Maria Borsotti from the desk next to mine, her old-timey paper notebook out and ready to be scribbled in.

"This is not fair," I said, dropping into my seat. Assignments were supposed to appear in headspace automatically. But one of the rules of the Scarcity classroom was that all the decent tech was switched off. Just like our miserable, diseased ancestors, we had to rely on our own brains, or, like Maria Borsotti, scratch glyphs on to dead wood pulp.

Learn to write by hand? For a pass/fail class? What a meeker.

I’d meant to put a reminder up for myself. The projects were first-come, first-scourge (Scarcity humor = hilarious), so most people had shot right into headspace the moment class had ended on Friday, racing to look up the easiest diseases before anyone else claimed them.

We were supposed to embody some form of ancient lameness, spending the next two weeks being blind or whatever. This was supposed to teach us what things were really like in the old days, as if sitting through an hour of Scarcity every day wasn’t depressing enough.

But I’d been distracted by Barefoot Tillman, who’d come up after class wanting help on an Antarctic camping trip. It’s hard to say no to Barefoot—who’s about two meters tall and the most beautiful girl in school. After talking tempsuits and penguins with her, I’d teleported straight to my climbing elective in the Alps. That started a busy weekend without pestilence or war or want: shopping with Mom on the moon, buckling down in headspace to work on my old-speak (my acting class was doing Hamlet), and spending all Sunday building my South Pole habitat for Advanced Engineering. The only time Scarcity had reared its diseased head was when my buddy Sho and I were simming some battle and I was like, Whoa, people died a lot back then! But then this airplane was bombing me, so I forgot again.

So here it was Monday, too late to do any research. As class officially began, headspace faded—my schedule, zero-g league scores, even the time of day, all gone. The world took on that weird, flat Scarcity look: one layer of vision, nothing to see but Maria Borsotti’s self-satisfied smile.

Poor Kieran, she said.

Help me, I whispered.

She looked away. "Well, I might have had a couple of leftover ideas…"

Mr. Solomon started by clearing his throat. He said that was how people got your attention in the old days, because they were always ill.

Well, people, I hope you’re ready for a life-changing experience.

Low-level groans rumbled through the classroom.

Solomon raised his hands to silence us. Perspective is the key to the next two weeks. This project shouldn’t dismay you. In fact, the better you understand how things used to be, the happier you’ll be about your lives now.

And that was the real point of Scarcity class: making us all into appreciative little meekers who never complained—even about really annoying things like, say, Scarcity class.

Maria shifted closer and murmured, Oh, too bad. I can’t seem to find my notes. But Mr. Solomon said he had a few extra ideas.

I swallowed. Our teacher had threatened a serious nightmare project for anyone who didn’t come up with their own. Bubonic plague, maybe. Or athlete’s foot, which sounded like a good thing to have, but wasn’t. I felt like one of those nerdy kids who can’t find a buddy in gym

Reviews for Stupid Perfect World

[mcintorino-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This novella is light in tone and written wryly and somewhat slyly tongue in cheek. It is a departure from the much more serious tone of Westerfeld's Uglies series. The playful irony of the work is somewhat of a relief from the much more intense worlds that Westerfeld sometimes conjures.I would recommend this book to students who enjoy Dystopian lit, and also Sci Fi fans. Stupid Perfect World would be a good fit in a contemporary lit course . It would be a good fit in a class that looks at the postmodern in contemporary American works. Readers who enjoy fantasy may also enjoy this read.

[eeminxs · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I honestly had expected more out of this book and was disappointed in it. Although the situation the two main characters found themselves in were intriguing, I would have loved more of their insight into how different it was to experience things they had never experienced before. The book only seemed to focus on the female and it was as if the author just used a bunch of cliches to explain her situation. Readers never got a glimpse into how experiencing sleep for the first time for the male effected him.
Despite that, I did like the concept of this book. I just wish there was more to it. There was so much potential to this book and I feel the author just took the short way out. I did enjoy using my imagination to figure out how the two characters were changed by their experience, but if I had more guidance and knowledge, that would have been better.

[wealhtheowwylfing · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

In the future, deprivation, sickness, hormonal imbalances, and pretty much all forms of suffering have been eliminated. Teenagers are required to take a class in "Scarcity" to remind them of how fortunate they are. Each chooses a single affliction or aspect of the pre-utopian world. Kieran chooses to start sleeping, while Maria chooses to no longer control her hormones. While their classmates deal with the common cold or seasickness, Kieran and Maria find their perfect, balanced selves tipping into a dramatic love affair.

Good ideas, good sketches of characters, but the story is too short and undeveloped.

[jadedog13 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In this future world, high school students are required to attend Scarcity class. For the final project, the students are supposed to "embody" some form of ancient lameness, spending two weeks being blind or whatever. This is supposed to teach them what things were really like in "the old days."

Barefoot Tillman decides to go with the common cold. Other students chose hunger, illiteracy; most chose diseases. Maria decides to suspend her hormonal balancers. She wants to find out what it was like to be a teenager "back then." She wants to experience the intense feelings. Kieran decides to try sleeping. He plans to sleep 3 hours a night. In this future, people don't need to sleep, they communicate in headspace and no one experiences diseases or even hormonal fluctuations.

My opinion:
The novella is told from two points of view, Kieran and Maria. It is interesting to see how sleeping (& dreaming) and hormones affect them. And how it changes their outlook.

It is amazing how Scott Westerfield manages to tell this story in only 9 chapters. I found myself wanting to learn more about this world and the people in it. I felt connected to the characters and it was fun to watch them learn about things that are so foreign to them yet such a big part of our everyday lives.

I enjoy Westerfield's writing and this book was no exception. This is a fun, easy to read book. It is short and can be read in one evening. So worth it!!

Recommended to:
Young adults who like their dystopian futures with a touch of romance.

[glennis.leblanc · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

As far as I can tell this is a stand alone novella set in the far future of earth with teleportation, perfect health and no need for sleep. teens take a class on called "Scarcity" and each has to live for two weeks giving up something that people in the past had to contend with. The POV character chooses sleep, another has her hormone balances turned off, another decides to suffer the common cold and so on. Kiernan has chosen sleep but needs help with it since he did no background study on it and another classmate that chose to let her hormones run wild helps him with the project. With hormones running wild, poor choices abound but it all comes out ok by the end of the story. Once I finished it I wanted to read more about the world setup but not necessarily these characters.

[rivkat_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Shortish story (ebook) about what people do in a future of zero scarcity—make their kids take Scarcity class, where the final project is to experience something the way people used to, which in the protagonists’ cases are respectively to sleep (and dream) and to shut off hormone regulation so that she experiences the same rush of emotions as a non-regulated teenager. This leads to self-discovery and romance. It’s got some cute bits, like the kid who complains about having to travel by boat instead of teleporting: “‘Capsizing, Mr. Solomon!’ Lao said. ‘That’s a special word just for ships turning upside down. I checked in headspace, and I couldn’t find a single word for trains turning upside down! Or cars or hovercraft—just ships. Think about it!’” And the male narrator on Hamlet: “We’d been practicing this scene for hours, trying to get the blocking right. Most of this was William Shakespeare’s fault; it’s pretty hard to switch two swords in the middle of a fight by accident. Come on.” (Though he’s wrong about that with good performers, it’s still funny.)