Extras is a slang term in Aya’s city for people who aren’t famous. It also is a secret clique, Extraterrestrials, dedicated to space colonization. (See “Cliques.”)
Eyescreens are surgical implants that allow the user to see the city interface at all times. (See “Gadgets and Inventions.”)
Face rank is a measure of all attention paid to a person detected by the city interface. In Aya’s city, mentioning people’s name, watching their feed, and any use of their intellectual output (designs, music, text) increases their face rank.
Fashion-missing means uncool, out of fashion, or someone who simply doesn’t seem to care. Also “face-missing.”
Feeds are a combination of what we call television and the Internet—everything from personal sites to the official government news services. In Aya’s city, everyone gets their own feed when they turn twelve. This way everyone who’s not a littlie has an equal chance to become famous.
Flash tattoos are subcutaneous digital displays. In other words, tattoos that move, usually triggered by heartbeat or other biological functions. The first were used to warn diabetics of blood sugar shifts, but eventually they became a fashion item, and were especially popular with Crims and Cutters.
Hoverboards are an old science fiction idea: a magnetically levitating surface halfway in size between a surfboard and a skateboard. (See “Hoverboard Manual” and “Science #2: Magnetic Levitation.”)
Hovercams are semiautonomous cameras with hover-lifters. They were originally developed for gathering news and covering sports, but in Aya’s city, where everyone has their own feed, they became a common personal accessory.
Icy is what the Cutters say instead of bubbly. Specials are much scarier than pretties, so I wanted them to use a word that sounded cold and sharp instead of frothy and fun.
Kickers get famous by publicizing things that other people do. Sort of a cross between journalists and bloggers.
Late pretties are people old enough to have started to get life-extension treatments. Also known as crumblies. (See “Life Phases in the Prettytime.”)
Lifter rigs are the superconducting magnets found in all hovering devices. (See “Science #2: Magnetic Levitation.”)
Littlies are anyone under the age of twelve. Littlies still live with their parents and are cute and small enough not to be called uglies. This is one of many slang words I stole from Australia, where it means younger kids, like toddlers. (See “Life Phases in the Prettytime.”)
Manga-heads are people in Aya’s city who get surge to look like manga characters. (See “Cliques.”)
Merits are what the council of Aya’s city give to doctors, teachers, and other workers who won’t ever get famous and yet are very important to society. Like face rank, merits can be acquired by everyone to exchange for goods and housing. The main difference is that merits, like money, run out, and you have to make more. Face rank lasts as long as you can stay famous.
Milli-Helen is exactly the right amount of beauty to launch one ship. This is Zane’s joking reference to Helen of Troy, a pre-Rusty natural pretty whose beauty started the legendary war between Greece and Troy. (Her face was said to have “launched a thousand ships,” meaning the Greek invasion force.) I stole this joke from Ben Schott of Schott’s Original Miscellany.
Mind-rain is the common term for the spread across the globe of the cure for bubbleheadedness, which brought about a global period of creativity and new inventions. (See “History #6: The Mind-Rain and the Extras.”)
Nanos are invisibly small machines. (See “Science #3: Nanos.”)
New pretties are people who have recently had the operation. The bubblehead effect is so strong that they really can’t do much but party, so they all live together in New Pretty Town. (See “Life Phases in the Prettytime.”)
New Pretty Town is where new pretties live (duh). In Tally’s city, it was located on an island in the middle of town. The river kept those nasty uglies out of the pleasure gardens. (See “Maps.”)
New System When Maddy’s cure reached Diego, the city government began to reassess the operation. At first, being bubbleheaded became optional, and then all forms of control over the operation were dropped. Resistance to the New System was the cause of the Diego War.
Pings are messages carried by the city interface, the ever-present system of communication and control. Pings carry any kind of data you want, a combination of e-mail, voice mail, and text-messaging. The city AI listens in on pings, and flags any it deems suspicious for the authorities. I stole this term from corporate slang for an e-mail that reminds you to do something, as in, “She didn’t send me that budget on time, so I pinged her about it.”
Position-finder See “Gadgets and Inventions.”
Pre-Rusties are the people who lived before industrialization. Maybe they didn’t have hoverboards, but at least their primitive cultures didn’t destroy Earth.
Pretties are people who have had the operation. In the Italian translation of Uglies, pretties were called perfetti, which literally means “perfects.” I thought that was cool. (See “Life Phases in the Prettytime.”)
The Pretty Committee is the common name for the Committee for Morphological Standards. (See “History #2: The Rise of the Cities and the Pretty Committee.”)
Prettytime is the long period when the bubblehead operation kept control of humanity’s appetites, cutting down on pollution, conflict, and population growth. Much of human culture stopped progressing during this era, which was marked by strong central governments and peace among the cities.
Reputation Bombers are a clique in Aya’s city who pump up their face ranks through cheating. I took the term from “Google bombing,” a set of techniques for boosting the Google rank of a search phrase for propaganda purposes. (In other words, trying to make your hotel the first one to appear when the word “hotel” is searched on Google.)
Reputation Economy See “Reputation Economies.”
Rusties are the oil-dependent culture that destroyed itself three hundred years before the books take place. (They are, of course, us.) Everyone calls them Rusties because that’s all that’s left of our culture: rust-covered ruins. (See “History #1: The Rusty Crash.”)
Smart matter See “Science #3: Nanos.”
The Smoke is where the rebel Smokies live. It’s called that because the runaways burn wood for heat, which city pretties would never do. In the early industrial age, London was called “The Smoke,” because its factory smokestacks filled the sky with gray clouds. A few people still use the nickname, which I’ve always liked.
Smokies are a group of rebels and runaways started by Maddy and Az, two surgeons who uncovered the bubblehead effect. They lived in a rustic mountain camp, using a combination of traditional and high technologies. They recruited runaway uglies from the cities, which ultimately led to their being tracked down and recaptured by Special Circumstances.
Sneak suits are adaptive camouflage devices used by Special Circumstances. (See “Gadgets and Inventions.”)
SpagBol is Australian slang for spaghetti Bolognese. (Australians avoid saying long words if they can help it.) Back when she was a littlie, my sister-in-law ate almost nothing but spaghetti Bolognese for six years. I thought that was funny, so I had Tally undergo a similar experience: SpagBol, SpagBol, SpagBol . . .
Specials are members of Special Circumstances, the secret branch of the city government that has replaced the military and intelligence services. They have their own kind of surgery that makes them “cruel pretties,” beautiful but scary. In his utopian Culture series, Scottish novelist Iain Banks uses the term “Special Circumstances” for the government’s secret enforcers. So I stole it. (See “History #3: Special Circumstances and the Smoke.”)
Suburbs are where middle pretties and their littlies live. (See “Maps.”)
Surge is short for surgery. The fact that pretties find the word “surgery” too long to say suggests how often they say it—we always shorten the words that we use most often in our culture
.
Surge-monkeys are people who take cosmetic surgery to extremes, often to achieve fame or notoriety.
The Thousand Faces Party is an annual bash at Nana Love’s residence in Aya’s city to which the thousand most-famous citizens are invited. (Also called the “Top Tenth Party,” because one thousand is roughly a tenth of a percent of the population.)
Tricks are very important in the world of Uglies. The city is very tightly controlled, so any time uglies can trick the authorities, they score a small victory. That’s why I use “tricking” in the way we use “hacking”—not fooling just one person, but undermining a whole system.
Uglies are between the ages of twelve and sixteen. Not cute enough to be littlies, not old enough to get the operation. (See “Life Phases in the Prettytime.”)
Uglyville is where the uglies live in dormitories, wearing uniforms and insulting one another. A soul-destroying place designed to make you yearn for New Pretty Town. (See “Maps.”)
Wardens are the city’s police force. Because of the compliant population, they usually deal with simple issues like trespassing and truancy. Miscreant uglies are their main concern.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Scott Westerfeld’s other novels include The Last Days, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and the sequel to Peeps; So Yesterday, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults; and the Midnighters trilogy. Hard at work on Leviathan, the first book in his next series, Scott alternates summers between New York City and Sydney, Australia. Visit him on the Web at www.scottwesterfeld.com.
READ THE WHOLE SERIES:
Uglies
Pretties
Specials
Extras
A NOTE TO THE READER ABOUT THE COVERS
From the Editor
The photograph on the cover of this book was actually an outtake from the Uglies photo shoot. For an important book, sometimes several different versions are shot. We chose the (real) cover for Uglies because it is so seductive, and evocative of the wild. While the image featured on the cover of Bogus to Bubbly didn’t make the final cut for Uglies, it’s perfect for an insider’s guide.
Other fun facts about the covers in the series? If you look carefully in Tally’s eyes on Uglies, you can see the reflection of the photographer. And on Extras, the design for Aya’s eyescreen was inspired by a 1980s video game, The Last Starfighter. When we started, little did we know that eyes would become such an important element on the covers.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SIMON PULSE
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Text copyright © 2008 by Scott Westerfeld
Illustrations copyright © 2008 by Craig Phillips
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Designed by Jane Archer
First Simon Pulse edition October 2008
Library of Congress Control Number 2008928643
ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-7436-9
ISBN-10: 1-4169-7436-9
ISBN-13: 978-1-4424-0738-1 (eBook)
Bogus to Bubbly Page 10
