Desai to Aycharaych:
"'Won't you be seated?' The chair in front of the desk didn't have to adjust itself much." (3, p. 89)
More self-adjusting furniture. (I think that I read another example recently but now cannot find it.)
By now, we have become used to such future amenities. However, when Desai enters Tatiana Thane's rooms at the University:
"This layout was incredibly archaic. No doubt the original colonists hadn't had the economic surplus to automate residences, and there'd been sufficient pinch ever afterward to keep alive a scorn of 'effete gadgetry.'" (7, pp. 121-122)
Does this imply no self-adjusting furniture? Sure enough:
"The chair [Desai] found was too high for his comfort." (p. 123)
Commendable consistency in the devilish details.
Despite the (usual) high quality of the furniture, Desai lacks one very obvious useful gadget. See Mobile Phones.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
While it would be unreasonable to expect all writers to think of everything, I can' help but regret Anderson not making greater use of the idea of pocket or mobile phones. He was windng down the Technics series around 1985, just as the first large, cumbersome, mobile phones were coming into use. We do see "visiphones" being used, something most of us still don't have!
Ad astra! Sean
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