Outlaw School (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Brilliantly extrapolated, all-too-probable . . . Shelve this alongside 1984 and The Color Purple : it's that good." -- -- Kirkus starred review

Product Description

Nominated for the 2000 James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award

In as gray, industro-technical future of protective shackles and slowed ideas, Jayne wants to be respectable and conform.  But conformity means accepting a limited destiny and the hollow entertainments that are brutally enforced as "news".  And to be respectable, she must gain back her virginity and give up an eye.  Jayne's life is out of control-her reality has teeth and educational drugs and binding tools- and the only cures for her growing dissatisfaction  with a bleak, repressive status quo seem to be madness or legal suicide. Or rebellion.  Jayne cannot, will not, be rehabilitated. So instead, she will live her life between lines, illegally encouraging the otherness of the lowly, the renegades, the crazies, the virtual whores, as she dedicates herself to the dangerous cause of outlaw education. There are many pitfalls built into the road Jayne has chosen to walk: failure, betrayal, terror, arrest, cyberia. But her courage and determination could be the catalyst for a new future.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Eos; First Printing edition (November 7, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380792508
• ISBN-13: 978-0380792504
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,924,079 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A bleak look at the future earth, November 11, 2000

By	Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews (#1 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Middle class Jayne knows what is expected of her by society. Conformity is the name of the game for girls like Jayne if she wants a "happy" life one-day with an all seeing spouse. Her legal alternative is state control drugs to keep her from thinking. Her other option is becoming a Judas girl.

However, instead Jayne becomes pregnant and is sent to a rehabilitation center where wayward girls are mentally placed in Cyberia. Jayne wants nothing to do with legal society and escapes into the OUTLAW SCHOOL, where teaching occurs without a state-sanctioned license. If caught by the News Agency wing of the government, Jayne and ilk will need rehabilitation for committing such a terrible crime against the state.

If OUTLAW SCHOOL seems like the heir apparent to Huxley's 1984, it is. The story line is grim as society is totally class bound with no hope for non-elite talented risk takers. Jayne is a fabulous protagonist who dares to dream. The alumni, staff, and students of the OUTLAW SCHOOL add to the overall harsh depressing landscape by acting as a counterpoint to the acceptable norms of society. Not for everyone because the plot is somber gray, Rebecca Ore paints a hellish technological future with upper class big brother in full control.

Harriet Klausner

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lots of good themes that are only lightly explored, December 4, 2000

By	Travisji Corcoran "anarcho-capitalist" (Arlington, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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There's something about an author writing dystopian SF that makes it very clear where he or she sees the dystopia coming from, and some of the feminist dystopias (see also The Gate to Women's Country and The Handmaid's Tale) seem to reveal the authors' minds as a bit claustrophic and extreme: does anyone seriously beleive that lurking just below the surface in America is a would-be patriarchial theocracy? Ger real.

After gritting my teeth against this insinuation in the first chapters, I was able to enjoy Ore's book more - it's clear that she's not the same sort of small-horizoned author as some others. When she dragged in the Open Software sub-plot, I got more engaged.

The problem with her writing, however, is that the threads never tie together too cleanly - a reader is lefting feeling unfufilled, as if the interesting action all takes place off stage. This is remniscent of the feeling I've gotten reading some of (William ?) Barton's SF.

I kept wanting to know how the society she envisioned came to be, what *exactly* went on with the Open Source underground, etc.

Instead, I got a lot of impressionistic strokes on a large canvas. Very well done, for what it is, but it didn't deliver what I look for in a novel.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clever and well-written, June 2, 2001

By	P. Nicholas Keppler "rorscach12" (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Ore presents her version of a not-too-implausible future. All information and knowledge is under strict copyright and how much one has access to is determined by their authorized social rank. Computer programs run against "meat" polliticians. Society gives out medication and even surgery like candy to children with undesirable traits. The book's heroine is Jayne, a middle class kid with unconcerned parents. Alienated at school and showing a thirst for knowledge undesirable for her class, her school prescribes her mind-bending, behavior-modifying drugs. To get off them, she allows herself to be impregnated, which causes even more rejection and disapproval from her society until she is institutionalized. Bitter and enraged by her conformist society, an older Jayne joins an outlawed teacher syndicate, teaching such banned information as the psychology and computer systems to all of society's bottom feeders in the hopes that they can improve their lives through the education society feels it best they not have. This book is a perfect mix of the Bell Jar and 1984. Ore merges a surreal backdrop and many very believable characters, easy to be concerned about. The previously mentioned concept about computer programs running against people for government positions is particularly clever. If we are accepting of our leaders being so obviously coached for public appeal and conformed to the establishment of parties, why not vote for a machine? The situations faced in this book are not only faced by denizens of the early twenty-second century but by all whom hear the first period bell Monday morning. It's honestly the best new book I have read in many, many moths.