{"id":4863,"date":"2015-01-03T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-03T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/booksyalove.com\/?p=4863"},"modified":"2015-01-02T13:36:28","modified_gmt":"2015-01-02T19:36:28","slug":"pills-and-starships-by-lydia-millet-book-review-climate-change-drugs-and-lies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/?p=4863","title":{"rendered":"Pills and Starships, by Lydia Millet (book review) – climate change, drugs, and lies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"book<\/a>Too sad to keep on living in a climate chaotic world,
\nher parents have chosen their time to die…
\nor is it the pharma talking?<\/p>\n

Nat’s mom and dad – former environmental activists<\/a> – could have waited just a few more years to invoke the Service Contract ending their lives, till the teen and her younger brother moved out as workers – why now?<\/p>\n

In this too-possible dystopia, global warming has changed weather patterns, babies are now illegal, and new diseases mutating weekly make face-to-face contact rare.<\/p>\n

Ask for Nat’s story at your local library<\/a> or independent bookstore<\/a> to see if she can find a way to keep her family together once she discovers the truths that pharma-corps are trying to hide. (I loved the book, but its title… not so much)<\/p>\n

**kmm<\/p>\n

Book info<\/strong>: Pills and Starships \/ Lydia Millet. Black Sheep\/Akashic Books, 2014.\u00a0 [author site<\/a>]\u00a0 [publisher site<\/a>]\u00a0 [author interview on NPR<\/a>]\u00a0 Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.<\/p>\n

My book talk<\/strong>: Preparing to honor her parents’ final week of life, Nat learns that big money uses pharma to trick the few remaining Americans into thinking that global warming has eliminated the entire natural world.<\/p>\n

At a tropical resort devoted to final Contracts, the teen and her\u00a0hackerkid brother discover real plants and animals and people who think for themselves.\u00a0 Are pharma-corporations really lying to the public about imminent doomsday?<\/p>\n

Her decision about joining the rebels must come soon, as her parents’ date with a lethal farewell drink in mere days will leave Nat and Sam in a group survivors’ home in Oregon – are her parents really sad enough about the state of the world to leave it forever?<\/p>\n

When a mega-hurricane hurtles toward Hawai’i, will it be too late to rescue her not-old parents and not-old-enough brother?<\/p>\n

Addressed to an imagined friend safely orbiting this climate-chaos world, Nat reflects in the Contract-provided mourning journal about Starships and Pills<\/em>\u00a0 and her unexpected opportunity to escape pharma-managed life… if she can. (One of 6,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Too sad to keep on living in a climate chaotic world, her parents have chosen their time to die… or is it the pharma talking? Nat’s mom and dad – former environmental activists – could have waited just a few more years to invoke the Service Contract ending their lives, till the teen and her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,68],"tags":[90,22,7,75,11,20,5,37,16,79,18,40,43,233,27,49,232,21,35,33,6,8],"class_list":["post-4863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-future","tag-abandonment","tag-behavior","tag-beliefs","tag-brothers","tag-communication","tag-conflict","tag-coping","tag-death","tag-determination","tag-environment","tag-family","tag-fathers","tag-growing-up","tag-hawaii","tag-medical","tag-memories","tag-oregon","tag-self-image","tag-surprises","tag-survival","tag-travel","tag-us-author"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4863"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4871,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4863\/revisions\/4871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}