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Fantasia. Fan, Mercutio, Hal, and Tyler are known as the "clods," who misbehave, while Simone, Isaac, Lazarus, Vashti, Champagne, and Pan are the "pets," who study and follow all of the rules. The digital teacher of the school is named
Maestro, but the clods call him Mae$ tro (pronounced 'Maeshtro') and do not respect him. Each student is given a digital world that they may edit to their liking and a "Nanny," a digital being that can help a student with anything they need help with.
233:. To test the efficiency of the software, one of the scientists, Halfway Jim, uses a program designed to be as close to a real child as possible, to run through the virtual lives the children will lead. Out of sentimentality, Jim's dying act is to integrate this program, which he names Malachi, into the virtual reality environment.
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The main story follows one of the virtual "students," a young man named
Halloween, who wakes up with total amnesia and must piece together what he can of the world around him. Halloween meets nine other students: Jasmine, Mercutio, Pandora, Simone, Isaac, Lazarus, Vashti, Tyler, Champagne, and
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so that he and Hal can escape the virtual world, and they both wake up in their beds in the school. They decide to visit their favorite diner, Twain's, and enjoy a nice meal before Merc decides to head back to IVR. Halloween calls his parents and reports that he is dropping out. After a long
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Halloween "graduates" all of the remaining students, waking them up from the virtual world. They decide to fulfill
Gedaechtnis' plans for them to rebuild the world, but Halloween rejects the plan. The book ends with Halloween standing in the woods of
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wrote that while the book "might seem a rather lumbering affair when laid out", it "nips along quite nicely, deftly sidestepping the overly drawn-out or too-fraught-with-meaning scenarios one might expect from this apocalyptic masquerade."
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wrote that "Despite a compelling twist near the middle, the low tension and meandering plot will likely frustrate the primary target audience, mainstream fans of such futuristic action films as The Matrix and
Minority Report." Ann Kim of
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renders all of humanity infertile, and causes people to die. In the lab of a major German-American genetic research facility, a group of scientists are working on a project to save humanity by raising ten
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wrote that despite "occasionally reading more like a drawn-out short story rather than a novel", the book is a "fine debut by a writer with potential to grow".
204:. The story is split between two settings: the middle of the 21st century (told through interludes and distinguished from the main story by
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wrote that Sagan "captures perfectly the voice and actions of a rebellious, extremely intelligent teenager." Gerald Jonas of
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208:) and a generation later. It is a picture of the last ten people on earth, a near-complete pantheon of gods and goddesses.
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discussion with both his parents and
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wrote that the book is "long on visuals, short on narrative logic and, surprisingly, weak on science."
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The backstory is revealed in interludes throughout the book. In the middle of the 21st century, a
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Mercutio asks
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347:: U.S. Hardback (Putnam Publishing Group)
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572:Internet Speculative Fiction Database
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506:Jonas, Gerald (14 September 2003).
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535:"Everfree"
480:"Idlewild"
452:"Idlewild"
450:Kim, Ann.
424:"IDLEWILD"
396:"Idlewild"
382:References
307:A sequel,
218:retrovirus
190:Nick Sagan
41:Nick Sagan
547:3 October
261:Reception
242:Taj Mahal
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Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.
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