2012;
395 pages. New Author? : Yes. Genre : Humorous Science Fiction; Satire. Overall Rating : 7½*/10.
Blake Given’s refrigerator talks to him.
Okay, it doesn’t vocally talk to Blake; that would be silly. But it is a web-enabled model, with a web
browser and a monitor screen embedded in the freezer half on the front door. It uses that screen to communicate with
Blake.
Which isn’t as amazing as it sounds.
For one thing, the refrigerator doesn’t know squat about syntax. For another, it doesn’t address Blake by his
name. Instead, it refers to him as “THAT
HUMAN PERSON”. But worst of all is its
insistence on typing everything in capital letters (doesn’t it know that means it’s yelling?!),
and its extremely poor taste in fonts.
Still, it seems to learn from its gaffes. And when it subsequently shuts down the entire
Internet, then follows that up by a worldwide power outage, it becomes evident that
ZAHIR (for
that is its name) is a threat to civilization. I’d ask ZAHIR to be my Facebook friend,
except for one thing. Since there is no
Internet, there is no Facebook.
And without my Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Etsy, and all those other online socializing sites, I’m not sure life is worth living anymore.
What’s To Like...
The Fridgularity
asks the question: what would happen to our world if suddenly all electronic
activity disappeared? No internet, no
cellphones, no TV or Radio, and in its most extreme cases, no electricity. S.M. Stirling has devoted a 15-book
alternate-history series (“The Emberverse”) to exploring this concept,
now Mark A. Rayner tackles it in a more satiric, absurdist fashion.
The
book is broken into two sections, “The Big Crash” and “A Cold Reboot”, each
comprising of 25 chapters. At 50
chapters for 395 pages, this means it's always easy to find a good place to
stop for the night. The setting is Landon, Ontario, Canada, apparently a takeoff of London, Ontario, which I'm embarrassed to say I’ve never heard of. I’m pretty it is the author’s stomping
grounds.
I
liked the literary nods to Siddhartha and Neal Stephenson. Ditto for the reference to playing blindfold chess, which I've actually done a few times. I also learned some new
acronyms: LARPing (“Live Action Role Playing”) which is real; and TARFU (we’ll let you
decipher that one) which I think the author made up. I never did figure out what the “Big
Lebowski Effect” was, which is not surprising since I’ve never watched that
movie.
Beneath all the absurdity, Mark A. Rayner offers some interesting insight
as to just how messed up we’d all be without our electronic devices and
associated social media. His portrayal
of how such upheavals to our everyday life can lead to the rise of religious
nut-jobs and blind-faith followers was rather sobering. Then there’s the slightly scary concept of a
sentient “Emerging Intelligence” in our electronic gadgetry, aka the titular
“The Singularity”.
There
is a moderate amount of cussing, and a roll in the hay near the end of the
book, but this all fit in nicely.
Everybody’s sense of humor is different, so some readers won’t find The Fridgularity funny at all. Personally, I thought it was hilarious.
Kewlest New Word ...
Pong (n.)
: a strong, unpleasant smell. (no, not the old
arcade game.)
Others : Numinous
(adj.).
Excerpts...
“Look at this,
none of it working. Even this, my
lifeline,” he said, brandishing his expensive and glossy little portable touch
screen phone that was de rigueur in
the Creative Department, even if you didn’t really need it. “I can’t do anything. No texts, no tweets, no updates, no apps,
pokes, prods, prons – nothing! I can’t
see my blog. I can’t comment on anyone
else’s. I’m totally cut off! We’re cut off, dude. I can feel it. We’re FUBAR. TARFU and FUBAR! TARFUBAR!
Oh, that’s good! I wish I could
tweet that!” (loc. 337)
It was a feeling
similar to the one he sometimes got as he drove to work. Did I
leave the oven on? Even if he thought
about it for another few minutes he’d never be able to remember, so he’d have
to turn back to check; objectively, the oven is either on or it’s not, but if
you stop your commute to check, you’re guaranteed that it will not be on. This is a form of quantum mechanics, the
Schrodinger’s Cat corollary for major kitchen appliances. (loc. 4325)
Kindle Details...
The Fridgularity sells for $6.99 at Amazon, although I got it years ago, probably when it was discounted or free. Mark A. Rayner has five other e-books at
Amazon (including
a non-fiction biography novella), ranging in price from $2.90
to $6.99.
Then, as is inevitable at pre-apocalyptic poetry readings, someone
threw the first punch. (loc.
503)
The
quibbles are nitpicky. Our hero deduces
ZAHIR’s mood by which font he uses, but in the Kindle version only uses one font for everything, so that cute twist loses some of its impact. I have the feeling that this was due
to whatever program or self-publishing software was used to convert the MS-Word
manuscript to a Kindle-friendly format.
Second, although there's not much of a plot beyond the "protagonist versus UE" (Ultimate Evil), conflict. But I happen to be a huge fan of Tom Holt, whose books are
similarly short on plotlines and long on satiric humor.
So this style didn't bother me.
Finally, while the ending is adequately resolves the "good-vs-evil" issue,
it leaves a lot of threads dangling. Indeed, I tassumed there was a sequel,
but ANAICT, that isn’t the case. Mark A.
Rayner has written several more novels since The Fridgularity came out in 2012, but I don’t believe any of them
carry on the tale. But not to worry; this is still a standalone novel.
7½ Stars. In
case you’re wondering, there really is such a thing as a web enabled refrigerator. Fry’s Electronics sells them, so does Best
Buy; you can even order one through Amazon.
Heck, Wikipedia has a post about them, although there they call it an
“Internet Refrigerator”. I’d never heard
of such a thing; I thought the author was goofing on me.
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