Love in the Time of Fridges by Tim Scott
This little book is a tough one. I want to like it more than it deserves.
When he’s having fun, it rolls along very well, and is often rather amusing, but it’s just not enough. That good time is enmeshed within an almost droning story arc, and the characters, while solid and good, just aren’t really all that critical to the story, at least not directly.
You know how Good Omens rocked right along for the most part, but by the end it was complete shit? No, of course not, because you all read at a fifth grade level. Anyway, this book has that same feeling for me. By the time it was done I cared less about it than when I started.
The thing being satirized is how we’re steadily enclosing ourselves in a soceity that’s too insulated from freedom in the name of reducing exposure to danger. At least that’s the face of it. Aside from slogans it does little to demonstrate the good or bad of either, and instead takes the all to familiar approach of hammering fascism into all the peg holes.
Late in the book we’re introduced to the OtherSide, along with a really brief explanation based on the uncertainty principle which leads me to believe the author may not actually understand the principle. That aside, this component of the story is a complete bit of cocksucking nonsense. It has no bearing, and is the baldest example of deus ex machina I’ve encountered in some time. Let me remind you that I’ve recently read a mess of PK Dick stories, just so you can get that in perspective. If he’d had the stones to trim out this little bit of crap the story would have been better. You know, now that I think of it, the whole thing was lifted from Half Life 2. Where it was done better.
Yeah, that’s right, I’m calling the writing in a game where the central character never speaks, signs, gestures, emotes, or writes better than something in a book.
Anyway, what’s good is really good, and what’s bad is rancid. Read it, but do what I did and check it out from a library.