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

Book Description
Nominated for the 2000 James Tiptree Jr. Memorial AwardIn 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.

About the Author
Rebecca Ore is the author of Gaia's Toys, Slow Funeral, and The Illegal Rebirth of Billy the Kid. She works in internet administration and lives in Philadelphia.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Rebecca Ore's 21st-century dystopian novel makes her Gaia's Toys (1995), a fable about eco-terrorism in a dehumanizing world, seem an optimistic thriller. In Outlaw School, Ore envisions a terrifying America rigidly stratified by class. Gender equality has taken a huge step backward with the rise of the Judicious (or "Judas") Girls, whose left eyes are replaced with implants to dictate proper feminine behavior. Euthanasia and suicide are so common among the upper classes that the public worries about the disappearance of genetically "superior" people. Ordinary folk accept the lies of the social and judicial system with indifference. Consumer goods and entertainment keep them happy; nobody wants the truth. Media operatives possess more power to interrogate and imprison than do the police.

This is deadpan at its deadliest. Outlaw School is a satire whose black humor is so dark as to be invisible. Squint, and the Orwellian world Ore has created is almost funny; just blink, and it is terrifying and tragic.

Jayne was always different. The daughter of a middle manager, she wasn't supposed to be smarter than the professors' kids in school. She wanted to be a scientist, so other teenagers bullied and mocked her. Then she got pregnant, and life got really bad.

Jayne doesn't want to be a Judas Girl like her prudish sister; she longs for the comfort of conformity but hates the tranquilizers forced on her. A succession of rash decisions land her in a psychiatric hospital. Pregnant out of wedlock, she has broken the social code for her class. Jayne's universe expects her to whitewash her experiences, to be a good suburban housewife.

Jayne cannot quell her rebellious nature, and eventually she discovers an underground where she can teach the working class. Her adventures lead her through legalized houses of prostitution, ghettoes of desperation, and the "cyberia" punishment chamber, a sensory deprivation rehabilitation unit. Jayne, and the reader, endure moral and intellectual vertigo in this world of "hospitals on top of hospitals, hospitals all the way down."

In the end, Jayne discovers how to be a heroine who can make a difference, and Ore gestures toward a metaphysical relativism that indicts a late-21st-century American society all too willing to throw away citizens on the bottom rung of the social ladder. If one's belief in what's real is conditional on class and intelligence, if reality is constructed, then who gets to construct it? A truly fine and deeply disturbing novel that demands comparison with Orwell's 1984 and Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale, Outlaw School will stay with the reader long after the final page. (Fiona Kelleghan)

Fiona Kelleghan is a librarian at the University of Miami. Book reviews editor for Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, she has written reviews and articles for Science-Fiction Studies; Extrapolation; The New York Review of Science Fiction; Science Fiction Research Association Review; Nova Express; St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers; Magill's Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature; Neil Barron's Fantasy and Horror: A Critical and Historical Guide; Contemporary Novelists, 7th Edition; and American Women Writers. Her book Mike Resnick: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide to His Work was published by Alexander Books in 2000.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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.

FROM THE CRITICS

Kirkus Reviews

In Ore's (Gaia's Toys, 1995, etc.) grim, chilling, brilliantly extrapolated, all-too-probable near-future, society is rigidly stratified by class; in state schools, middle-class children, especially girls, may not be as clever, articulate, or assertive as their social superiors. Girls are pressured into becoming Judicious—Judas—girls: they have one eye replaced with an implanted surveillance device, through which potential husbands can observe. Clever, nonconformist Jayne soon falls afoul of the school authorities and is put on stupefying drugs. To get off the drugs, she could become a Judas girl; instead, she gets pregnant and is sent to a psychiatric hospital where misbehaving patients are forced into cyberia (Virtual Reality). Others, like ex-Judas girl Alice, stagger from crisis to crisis. When Jayne is forced to assist with restraining other patients—she has to work to help defray the cost of her stay—she decides she must find a way out. Rich, drunken philanthropist Ocean shows her elements of math and programming, and offers her an opportunity to attend college. After her baby is born (she never sees him), Jayne enters the world of the Outlaw School. Teaching without a government license is illegal; with a license, you may teach only what the government approves and considers appropriate, in an approved and appropriate manner. Illegal Jayne moves from assignment to assignment, her clients whores, drudges, social misfits, the abused, and system rejects with their wrecked, desperate lives. Inevitably, she comes to the attention of the News Agency, the system's Thought Police. Shelve this one alongside 1984 and The Color Purple: it'sthatgood.It's also unremittingly harrowing. Read it anyway.