Recently, I've been hearing a lot about the future. Whether it be the future of my education and career, or the future of the planet that we're slowly destroying, ideas about it are everywhere.

Over the past week or so, I've been rereading one of my favorite series of books, "Uglies" by Scott Westerfeld, and it's really gotten me thinking.

The series takes place several centuries into the future, after our pathetic attempt at civilization has been almost totally obliterated by the oil we've come to rely so heavily on. Most of the Earth has been left alone, save for lone cities dotting the planet every once and a while.

The cities are totally self-sufficient, no longer using oil for anything. A metal grid is buried underneath the cities, and everything runs on magnetic lifters.

Metal becomes the precious resource, and is recycled carefully, along with plastic. The use for paper, and therefore killing trees, has been completely eliminated. There are no roads, because hovercars fly above the buildings, and high-tech buildings and metal rings keep an eye and ear on every person at all times.

No one needs money for anything, and so no one gets paid. Everything is produced in the city. Everything is free. Economic classes no longer exist.

Every single person is equal, and this is made sure of with a complicated operation that everyone undergoes on the day they turn 16. Their skin is stripped away, regrown. Their bones are reshaped, their body systems all strengthened. All unnecessary fat is sucked away. Every single person is made to look how biology has deemed as perfect, as the most attractive a human can look.

After the operation, these perfect human beings go to live in a different part of the city, where they can drink, dance, have sex, and do whatever they could possibly want as much as they want with no possible consequences whatsoever.

As they get older, they get new operations to continue looking pretty and staying healthy. No one ever looks old. People live happily until well into their hundreds.

Everyone is totally gorgeous, equal, and happy.

This sounds pretty awesome, doesn't it? Not a bad trade for the life we live now, right?

Not quite.

All people between the ages of 12 and 16 are called Uglies. They live in Uglyville, in dorms together. They attend school, quite like today's high school, learning about all the fatal mistakes that we, referred to as "Rusties," made when we still existed.

These students are taught that until the operation, their faces are pretty much disgusting. They are made to feel terribly ashamed by the way they look. They know that no naturally occurring face is even remotely attractive, and that they will only be worthwhile people when they've had the operation, when they become Pretties.

As I already mentioned, everyone is monitored closely. There is very little privacy, and everything is tightly run. Anyone who tries to go against anything is considered a serious threat to the order of the city and is dealt with accordingly.

Outside the cities, nature has taken back over, becoming almost what it was before humans took over.

It might sound a little weird, but the scary thing is, it's a fairly realistic future. Beauty and the environment are two things that our society is extremely concerned with. Our reliance on foreign markets, our overuse of fossil fuels, and the gradually spreading use of plastic surgery and crazy beauty products could very easily be sending us down this path, toward this weird distorted mix of every terrible type of society ever created.

As the books "Uglies," "Pretties," "Specials," and "Extras" delve into the truths about what keeps the society running smoothly, they turn from sci-fi adventure tales into true horror stories that show us what could truly happen to us in years to come. Our faces, the faces of the "beautiful" celebrities we've come to admire, would all horrify these people to death. No one would think for themselves any longer.

I am utterly clueless about how to save the world. I have no solutions. All I know is that I don't want it to turn out like the world in this book series.

It's good to think about, though, and I think you should read these books. Not only do they give a lot of insight into what we're headed for, but they're also just really good books. I haven't been able to put them down, and I've even read them before.

Even if you don't like sci-fi and couldn't care less about the future, I would still recommend reading them. Your ideas about the world and right and wrong will change for the better. I guarantee it.