The Last Book in the Universe

The Last Book in the Universe (2000) is a science fiction novel by Rodman Philbrick. Set in a cyberpunk dystopia, its protagonist and narrator is a teenage boy named Spaz who suffers from epilepsy.

Plot summary

The story is set in a post-disaster, dystopian future city, called The Urb, which has been disturbed by an earthquake known as "The Big Shake". The Urb is plagued by poverty, gang warfare, and the use of mindprobes, which are analogous to hard drugs and which enable users to temporarily escape their harsh lives through images. Books are a thing of the past and reading and writing are lost arts which the vast majority of the population ignore. Genetically improved people, called "proovs," live Spaz is a 16-year-old boy whose adoptive family has abandoned him because they feared the symptoms of his epilepsy. Spaz runs errands for Billy Bizmo, the leader/boss of his "latch", a section of The Urb. On one of his errands, Spaz is sent to rob Ryter, a very old man who possesses the lost arts of reading and writing. Spaz soon meets Little Face, a five year old orphan with no one to care for him, and Lanaya, a proov who charitably gives out food. At first, Spaz is very hostile towards Ryter, but Ryter understands Spaz's situation and does his best to help him, offering no resistance when Spaz arrives to steal Ryter's meager possessions . Eventually Spaz learns that Bean, his beloved stepsister, is dying. Ryter and Little Face accompany Spaz on a journey to find Bean. The trio starts by traveling through a large, broken water pipe that leads to other latches.

Along the way, they pass through latches controlled by various other bosses, having adventures along the way. At one of the latches which is ruled by the Monkey Boys gang, they find that the leader Mongo the Magnificent is dying and Ryter convinces one of the Monkey Boy guards to take his place. At the next latch the group sees the entire latch burning and find Lanaya being attacked. She is rescued by Spaz and Ryter and she joins them on their journey. They start traveling towards the latch where Bean lives. Eventually the story's heroes find Bean, who is dying of leukemia. Lanaya decides to take Bean to Eden, along with Spaz, Ryter, and Little Face, and soon they arrive at Lanaya's contributors', or parents', house.

At this point in the novel, it is shown that Lanaya is a special proov who has been bred to eventually lead Eden, and so she has rights and privileges that other proovs do not. They take Bean to a proov hospital and she is cured of her sickness using genetic surgery. Ryter and Spaz, and Little Face enjoy the paradise of Eden, being unfamiliar with grass, a blue sky, fish in a stream, and apples, among other things. Some time later Ryter, Spaz, and Bean are thrown out of Eden because the elders who rule over Eden decide they are unacceptable, even though Bean is extremely smart, having beaten one of Lanaya's contributors in chess multiple times. The elders of Eden refuse to accept that someone from the Urb could naturally be better than a proov in any way. Little Face is secretly adopted by Lanaya's contributors. Lanaya reveals to the elders that the mindprobes, which cause so much damage to the people who use them, come from Eden, and so all the mindprobes throughout The Urb are deactivated, causing rioting and anarchy outside Eden. Bean is deposited at her home, and Ryter and Spaz are returned to theirs. Back at Spaz's home latch Ryter is blamed for the deactivation of the mindprobes and is brutally killed, while Spaz has an epileptic seizure. Before his death, Ryter tells Spaz that he is the last book in the universe. Billy Bizmo, the leader of Spaz's latch, tells him that he is his father and that his mother died at his birth.

The story ends with Lanaya sending Spaz a message about how it's getting better in Eden and how she believes they can fix it all in time. Spaz takes on the name Ryter, continuing his work, writing the last book in the universe.