Customer Reviews

2033: Future of Misbehavior

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2033: The Future of Misbehavior is the love child of edgy culture site Nerve.com and Swedish Vodka brand Svedka. Yes, that's right: in 2003, not only do you get interplanetary dating, Madame President, and socialized plastic surgery, but an entire short story collection can be branded by an alcohol company. As the opening pages state, this project was "made possible by the influence of Svedka, the Number One vodka of 2033." The Malibu Svedka book launch party was a paparazzo's dream, with full coverage in the society pages. The sponsorship campaign around the book is scheduled to last a full year, but Svedka has given full editorial control to Nerve.com and insists that no product placement or content were dictated by the partnership.

It's only natural that the product sponsor of choice for writers is an alcohol company, right? Better that than a pencil company or a dictionary publisher.

According to this cadre of vodka-addled writers, the future is a caricature of our current vapid, celebrity-obsessed culture. Deities are ordained by People Magazine, fellowships based on the lives of Nichole Richie, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan are awarded, and celebrities endorse the swinging lifestyle. The short story collection has its hits and misses, and plenty of sarcastic wit, but it feels like an overdone parody. This is a book to buy for its slick sponsorship. You'll get to read the latest from modern literary talents, you'll probably laugh out loud a few times, and you'll be able to tell future generations that you participated in a literary branding experiment of 2007.

This was a most forgettable tome. Unimaginative sound-bite martini bar fiction with little point, a bland finish and no aftertaste. My copy came from the cutout bin and went to Goodwill immediately after consumption.

an alternative way to look at the possibilities of the future. a great book to read if your traveling with not much time to really get into the story.
i personally loved this book.

Novels, short stories, and films about the future serve a need for all those who crave to participate in it but may not survive long enough to do so. One can participate in the future, enjoy its pleasures and its vices, and contemplate what life will be like just a few decades from now. At this time, the derivative of the curve of technological change will take on its maximum value, and one can therefore expect to witness events and technology that will dwarf those of today. Exciting times are ahead; more exciting than anything that has been witnessed by any human to date. Those born in this century are therefore the luckiest generation, and are the envy of all those technophiles and apologists for the twenty-first century.

This book does a fair job of knocking the reader out of the relative equilibrium of the present, but it could have been a lot better. Its words could have been more carefully chosen, and its content more representative of the roller coaster ride of change that will occur in the year 2033. Celebrity-driven cultures, plastic surgery, and other niceties find their place within the covers of this fem-robot-decorated book, but its plots are sometimes too quiet. This century is noisy, very noisy, even deafening. There is no quiet time in the twenty-first century, since there is no need for it. There are too many interesting distractions, and misbehavior and sexual indulgencies will involve the artificial, but far beyond the simple toys of today. To penetrate a mixture of silicon, plastic, and metal that can also think and lust, will be a normal occurrence in the everyday life of the year 2033.....