MARTians - Blythe Woolston

Award-winning author Blythe Woolston conjures an alien yet strangely familiar world of big box stores and suburban decay. Here, daily routine revolves around shopping - for those who can. For Zo, the mission is simpler: live.

Sharp and satirical, this dark comedy will appeal to fans of M.T. Anderson's groundbreaking dystopia, Feed. An unsettling story of consumerism gone mad, MARTians brilliantly imagines "a world that is part Kafka and part Orwell" (Booklist).

Last girl Zo Zindleman, numerical ID 009-99-9999, is starting work at AllMART, where "your smile is the AllMART welcome mat". Her living arrangements are equally bleak: she can wait for her home to be repossessed now that AnnaMom has left, or move to the Warren, an abandoned shopping centre, to live with the other left-behind children. As Zo struggles to find her place in a world that has consumed itself beyond redemption, she realizes she isn't ready to disappear into the AllMART abyss quite yet. Zo wants to live.

Blythe Woolston's first novel, The Freak Observer, won the William C. Morris Debut Award. She is also the author of Black Helicopters, an American Library Association Best Fiction for Young Adults selection. Blythe Woolston lives in Billings, Montana, USA.

Consumerism has gone mad leaving a strange, detached society of suburban decay. Bleak and eerie darkly humorous dystopia.
The Bookseller

…a shrewd satire of rampant consumerism that's less about the death of the American Dream than death by the American Dream. […] an effective introduction to dystopian sci-fi, and a cautionary tale.
SFX Magazine