103 pages • 3 hours read
Rodman PhilbrickThe Last Book In The Universe
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “They Call Me Spaz”
The novel begins from the perspective of Spaz, a young teenaged boy living in a different reality where people use mindprobes (or needles jammed directly into their brains) instead of reading. There are different probes—"trendies, shooters, sexbos, whatever you want" (7)—for different experiences. Spaz has a medical condition that prevents him from using probes because the electrode needles will give him seizures.
Spaz is recording an eyewitness account of when the Bully Bangers “went to wheel the Ryter for his sins” (10).Spaz lives in the Urb (an urban area of the region), which is controlled by gangs, and his latch is controlled by the Bangers. The only other place to live is Eden, and in order to live there you have to be genetically improved (known as a “proov”). Spaz used to have foster parents, Kay and Charly, as well as a younger adopted sister named Bean, but that part of his life is over and he doesn’t like to talk about it. Spaz met Ryter, an old man known as a “gummy,” when he was sent by the Bangers to steal from him.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Stealing Is My Job”
Spaz sets out to find Ryter, who lives in a “stackbox.” The housing boxes are stacked 10 high in rows of 100, and the stacks is located out of the city at the Edge, alongside the Pipe, which was a former river before an event known as the Big Shake changed everything. Before the Big Shake, during a period known as "the backtimes,” everything was “perfect, and everybody lived rich” (12). Spaz thinks this is just a story.
The stacks, designated for the incredibly poor, elderly, or drug-dependent, offer basic housing with no plumbing and are located beside a derelict warehouse. As he wanders through the area, Spaz notices a small 5-year-old boy hiding from him; at that moment, he realizes there are quite a few people hiding, assuming he is from the Bully Bangers. Spaz trades the young boy (whom he calls Little Face) a chocolate bar, or “chox,” for guidance to Ryter’s stackbox. When he arrives, he’s surprised to find the home open and the elderly man expecting him, his belongings neatly folded and stacked. The man confirms that he knew Spaz would be coming and invites Spaz to take anything he wants from the stack. Spaz feels like he’s being tricked and suspects that Ryter is hiding something of more value, to which Ryter soon reveals he has a book.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Those Who Remember”
Spaz thinks Ryter is lying, revealing his knowledge that long ago, books used to be in libraries and presumably, not homes. This is something he learned when he was young. Ryter is intrigued because people don’t generally have strong memory retention any longer due to the prevalence of probes. Ryter shows Spaz the book he’s writing, which he is doing longhand because his voice writer was stolen. Ryter hopes that future generations will be populated by readers and says that everyone has their own story to tell, but Spaz doesn’t want to hear him. He leaves with Ryter’s “junk”(14) and doesn’t think he’ll see the man again.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
Spaz, the teenaged protagonist and first-person narrator, is writing the story from some point in the future, although his intended audience is not his contemporaries. The first sentence places the audience “a thousand years from now. Because nobody around here reads anymore” (10). Another sentence in the first chapter sets up the narrative perspective on the events the audience is about to read: “I’m talking into an old voice writer program that prints out my words because I was there when the BullyBangers went to wheel the Ryter for his sins, and I saw what they saw, and I heard what they heard, and it kind of turned my brain around” (10).One of the final scenes in the book is of the Bangers taking the Ryter to wheel. After this establishing chapter, the reader is thrust firmly back into the narrator’s past, although the narration remains to be told largely in the present tense from Spaz's first-person perspective.
Chapters 1 to 3 introduce the basic world of the novel and its futuristic dialect, laying the foundation for the unfamiliar vocabulary that will continue and develop throughout the story. Some examples here include words and phrases like “proov,” “backtimes,” “the Urb,” and “the Pipe.” This is a common and well-established technique used by dystopian authors to differentiate between our world and the fictional future world of the text, one of the most recognizable examples of this being Nadsat, the fictional language used in Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange.
These first chapters also introduce some of the most important characters in the story, including Spaz, Ryter, Little Face, and even the Bully Bangers, although their leader is not yet labelled by name. And perhaps most importantly, these chapters introduce Ryter’s book, his prized possession. From the first sentence, reading is placed in a position of prominence, even if, for Spaz, reading and writing do not come naturally, and Spaz describes his first look at the book as “covered with small black marks […] like the footprints of bugs” (19).
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By Rodman Philbrick
