After landing on Earth, the vuvv generously offered free advanced technology and cures for every illness imaginable. With his parents' jobs replaced by alien tech and no money for food, clean water, or the vuvv's miraculous medicine, Adam and his girlfriend, Chloe, must get creative to survive.
"Practically every word reflects a prescient, bitingly precise critique of contemporary human folly, of economic and environmental inequities and absurdities." -- The Horn Book (starred review)

When the vuvv first landed, it came as a surprise to aspiring artist Adam and the rest of planet Earth, though not an unwelcome one. But with his parents' jobs replaced by alien tech and no money for food, clean water, or the vuvv's miraculous medicine, Adam has to get creative to survive. And soon enough, Adam must decide how far he's willing to go -- and what he's willing to sacrifice -- to give the vuvv what they want. National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson returns to future Earth in a sharply wrought satire of art and truth in the midst of colonization.