Traveling on I-70 from Ohio to Missouri in the jumpseat of an
old non-air conditioned box truck with nothing to do can make
you think. By 19th Century Standards, I'm in a science
fiction work. A small truck moving faster than any train of
the time, surrounded by gasoline-driven compressors &pumps
& generators, portable computers, remote video cameras and
recorders, hand-held mobile telephones, global positioning
systems, environmental suits, an underwater robot - what would
Verne think!?
With that in mind, I read "User Friendly" by Spider
Robinson.
"User Friendly" is a collection of Spider Robinson
short works with all of his strengths and defects. He's great
at introducing science fiction ideas into the here and now.
His use of mechanical details come into play, as a particular
car, medicine or weapon is lovingly described, then used to help
make the setting realistic. It would be nice, though, if his
characters could have been given a similar amount of detail.
While I thought the essays were uneven, I enjoyed the raps, beat
pros-etry discussing various science fiction authors in the
style of Lord Buckley. These prose-poetry mixes offered a nice
changup, and showed some techncal originality. If not something
I'd like to read everyday, it was a nice bit of original writing.
The odd thing is that I thought the traditional science fiction
stories fall flat. The futuristic works collapse into long
dialogues and philosophising with weak endings. The exception
is "When No Man Pursueth", a nice Jeffery Archer-type
tale where a hero wannabe makes a bunch of mistakes, but ends up
doing good anyway.
In short, "User Friendly", will provide a fix for Spider
Robinson junkies, annoy lovers of "rockets and Martians"
sci-fi, and entertain those who like moderately intellectual
fiction with fantasy elements.
