RTW: Guess This Dystopian Pitch

(updated: the link is also at the end, but the answers can be found here)

Love a puzzle. Love slapstick. Love reversal-filled, ambiguous conversations. So getting you guys to guess some of my favorite books by my own abstruse elevator pitches? On. It.

This week's topic: You're re-reading one of your faves when someone asks the dreaded question: "What's that book about?" Give us your best off-the-cuff blurb of any book, any genre, and have your readers try to guess the title in the comments!

Okay, okay. So this isn't quite about puzzles and slapstick, but I saw "blurb" and thought "pitch," and from "pitch" went straight to Abbott and Costello:

Costello: Look, You gotta pitcher on this team?

Abbott: Sure.

Costello: The pitcher's name?

Abbott: Tomorrow.

Costello: You don't want to tell me today?

Abbott: I'm telling you now.

Costello: Then go ahead.

Abbott: Tomorrow!

Costello: What time?

Abbott: What time what?

Costello: What time tomorrow are you gonna tell me who's pitching?

Abbott: Now listen. Who is not pitching.

Costello: I'll break your arm, you say who's on first! I want to know what's the pitcher's name?

Abbott: What's on second.

Costello: I don't know.

Abbott & Costello Together: Third base!

This pretty much informs half the dialogue between my MC and The Boy. Those scenes just fly.

But that isn't this week's topic. So. On to the pitches! I am going to give you two, one from my current YA pile, and one from my Russian exam pile. You'll see why in a moment.

Pitch The First
Okay, so there's this Society – and this is some unknown time in the future – where human social interaction has been turned into a science and all activity is measured and prescribed based on scientific calculations, including what once would have been called romantic pairings. The Society's solution to love is a mandatory operation that leaves people patient and unexcitable. The main character narrates a several month period in this Society after a new romantic interest comes into the picture, one who has not been assigned by the Society and who introduces to the very scientific, rule-abiding protagonist an unfettered, freer way of living life – a way that includes passion, love and an anarchic underground group that is out to antagonize the Society. 

Pitch the Second
Okay, so there's this Society – and this is some unknown time in the future – where human social interaction has been turned into a science and all activity is measured and prescribed based on scientific calculations, including what once would have been called romantic pairings. The Society's solution to love is a mandatory operation that leaves people patient and unexcitable. The main character narrates the changes that occur after the idea of love is made less abhorrent by a new romantic interest, whose presence in the story forces the main character to question the very basis of the "science" that Society uses to keep love at bay. The romantic interest also has connections to an anarchic underground group that is out to antagonize the Society.


Yes, I made those pretty dang ambiguous.

Intentionally.

But to help you guys figured this out, here are two SPECIFIC details, one that matches to each, that make these books more distinct in an elevator pitch: one of them involves a planned spaceship project, a glass wall between the Society and the wild, and all the characters are named not with names, but with a combination of a letter and three numbers; the other one involves a rewriting of history and mythology to support the idea of love as the root disease of all human ills, cities bounded by guarded walls to keep the wild out, and characters named after prostitute "saints."

So. Guesses?

Answers – and videos! including a dance interpretation! – are in this backdated post.

Happy Wednesday, all!