Last week, I mentioned the no-nonsense prose most of the other stories had, in contrast to Regina Clarke’s lyrical dream-voice. Here, just as Clarke’s dreamlike language works for “Night Circus,” that no-nonsense, hard-boiled prose works for Kevin David Anderson’s “The Comforting.” Both are featured in The Future’s So Bright, now available wherever better books are sold.
Detective Lentil sits in his faded office, a gruff cop of the old schools, who knows better how to get information out of people than computers, and prefers it that way. This time, though, it’s not the leggy blonde who walks in and breathlessly asks after her dear, disappeared husband (though I’m sure Lentil would have preferred it that way), but a beardless boy name of Jasper Casper, who’d like to report an assault by his plaid comforter.
Yes, the blanket.
“Just the facts, man.”
And as Lentil tries his damnedest Joe Friday to get this kook’s report so he can go home to his empty apartment, more reports start coming in (and walking in) of a crazed plaid comforter, loose on the town, who’s finally snapped his last thread and taking it out on an indifferent world. Soon, instead of going home, Lentil, Jasper, and Ms. Peaches are racing across town, where the rogue blanket is atop the towering Skyrell Corporation building, and everyone but Lentil are taking selfies. What follows is a hilarious, Adamsian-but-not-quite-as-dense satire of misapplied high technology, misanthropic blankets, and one very misguided corporate turtleneck.
Which makes sense, Anderson specifically mentions “a scene by the late great Terry Pratchett” as his inspiration for the piece. While his voice is unmistakably American, in that New York minute sort of way, he does have something of both Pratchett’s and Adams’ absolute poker-faced voice going for him. Although he affirms his distrust of technology (like Detective Lentil, he still exclusively plays the vinyl he bought in the eighties, and refuses to own a cell phone), Anderson’s criticism of technology and the culture it breeds lacks the cruelty and mean-spiritedness of a lot of similar “satires.” I work in a tech company, own an iPhone, and handle tech support for a living, and I was laughing my ass off at the dialogue even when it wasn’t silly, because I know these people. For someone who despises tech, Anderson seems to spend a lot of time with tech heads.
It makes me wonder exactly which Pratchett scene it was, the one that has nothing to do with technology, that he read.
Next week, the wild, unexpected ride of “Lady Jade.”
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