Bogus to Bubbly: An Insider’s Guide to the World of Uglies

THE WORLD OF UGLIES, SET IN OUR NOT-SO-DISTANT FUTURE, is a complex place filled with bubbly technology and lingo, yet bogus rules about status and appearance. That’s why a guide to the world of uglies has been requisitioned from the hole in the wall. Inside you’ll find:

A rundown on all the cliques, from Crims and Cutters to tech-heads and surge-monkeys

The complete history, starting with the destruction of the oil bug to the launch of Extras in space

How all those awesome gadgets came to be: hoverboards, eyescreens, skintennas, sneak suits...

PLUS an exclusive look at Scott Westerfeld’s first draft of Extras -- starring Hiro, not Aya.

And so much more, it’s mind-wrecking.

Scott Westerfeld is the author of the Leviathan series, the first book of which was the winner of the 2010 Locus Award for Best Young Adult Fiction. His other novels include the New York Times bestseller Afterworlds, the worldwide bestselling Uglies series, The Last Days, Peeps, So Yesterday, and the Midnighters trilogy. Visit him at ScottWesterfeld.com or follow him on Twitter at @ScottWesterfeld.

Craig Phillips has been creating cover art and drawings for books, comics, and magazines for nearly two decades. He is most at home working on tales about myth and magic. His latest book--Giants, Trolls, Witches, Beasts: Ten Tales from the Deep, Dark Woods--is a 200-page graphic novel about just that! It will be in stores in May 2017. When he is not drawing and writing, he likes to swim in the lakes and walk in the forests and mountains of New Zealand. Visit him at CraigPhillips.com.au.

Cliques

Theoretically, all pretties get along with one another. But in any large group of human beings, there are different types of people who want to spend their time in different ways. So it didnt take long for cliques to form in Tallys city, organized around all the typical new-pretty activities: ballooning, partying, and other kinds of socializing.

Also, it made sense to me that pretties would form cliques. Thats the sort of thing that the pretties I knew in high school liked to do.

So here are mini histories of all the cliques mentioned in the Uglies series. (At least, I hope I got them all.)

Tallys City

Crims

Being crim can change the world.
-- Miki

The Crims are one of the few cliques that started in Uglyville, about a year before Shay and Tally met. That group ran away to the Smoke, except for Zane and Shay, who chickened out. Zane restarted the clique in New Pretty Town, where Tally later joined. As Tally and Zane become famous for their bubbly exploits, the Crims expanded to become one of the largest cliques in New Pretty Town. Many of these new members wound up as Cutters under Shays guidance (see ＂Cutters＂).

The Crims are most famous for their mass balloon escape from New Pretty Town, and although Zane was soon recaptured, he returned to find the Crims still thriving. Tricks and other forms of rebellion had at last become a part of pretty culture. The Crims became a vital conduit between Tallys city and the New Smoke, distributing the cure to tens of thousands of new and middle pretties. Once Dr. Cable was finally ousted from power, many Crims became, ironically, part of the new political leadership of Tallys city. But by that time, Zane, the Crims founder, was dead, a tragic victim of the Diego War.

Cutters

The Cutters were my pride and joy, my special Specials.
-- Dr. Cable

The Cutters were originally a pretty clique started by Shay. When she saw how Tally and Zane were becoming less pretty-minded, Shay tried to create a cure for herself. But the only thing that reduced her bubblehead haze was the extreme pain of cutting. She spread the practice to a few other Crims, including Ho and Tachs, and to many other pretties who had not been voted into the Crims. Together they became the Cutters.

After the Crims mass escape, the Cutters were recruited by Dr. Cable to become a new division of Special Circumstances. After undergoing her brain-washing, they were dedicated to hunting down the New Smoke. They lived in the wild, even hunting animals for food. In a way, the Cutters lived a twisted version of the Smokey life that Shay had been torn away from (thanks to Tally). Many of the Crims recaptured after the mass escape, including Tally, were given the surgical procedure that turned them into Cutters.

Just before the Diego War, the Cutters were infiltrated by Fausto -- a former member who had been captured and cured by the Smokies -- and he cured all of them. In their new form, they became the heroes of the Diego War and have since helped the New Special Circumstances in many missions against cities that expand too far. They no longer cut, but the name remains.

Hot-Airs

If Shay hadnt introduced her to the Crims, Tally figured she would have been a Hot-air. They were always drifting off into the night and landing at random places, calling a hovercar to pick them up from some distant suburb or even past the city limits.

Hot-airs are obsessed with ballooning and all forms of flight. They hate to be on the ground, and even when they arent in balloons, they prefer to be on balconies or rooftops, and they always live on high floors. They call everyone who isnt a Hot-air a ＂groundling.＂ As the cure spread through Tallys city, a few Hot-airs took up hoverboarding, a pastime previously unheard of in pretty culture. After the mind-rain, many Hot-airs joined the Extras space colonization project. Some still prefer the traditional hot-air balloon, and vast fleets can be seen taking off from the cities, filling the night sky with wild colors and tiny spigots of flame.

The Swarm

Of course the Swarm was everywhere, all jabbering to one another on their interface rings.

The Swarm is a tight-knit clique that uses skintenna surge to create social bonds. Their skintennas are all on one shared channel, so that anything one Swarmer says is heard by all the others. They go places only in huge groups and generally dont talk to anyone outside the Swarm. Because of the lack of privacy, the Swarm has lots of infighting, and several groups have broken off from the main clique. To make things confusing, they all call themselves the Swarm. All claim to be the original group, and nobody knows which one really is. Since the mind-rain, the Swarm has started to experiment with group-think software, hoping one day to hear one anothers thoughts. It is unclear how the clique will evolve if they ever get that to work.