"New Seattle Health and Safety. Do not die for no reason."
Welcome to New Seattle, where warning messages abound in
place of advertisements in an effort to protect the
population from themselves and each other.
Ex-cop Huckleberry Lindbergh returns after eight long years
of self-imposed exile in search of something...anything to
make him feel human again after mourning for his beloved
Abigail. No sooner does he cross the border from the wilds
of America into the innocuous, seemingly safe New Seattle,
than trouble finds him. A chance encounter with Nena, a
concerned citizen and savior of sentient appliances, gets
him a one-way trip to jail and an appointment to have his
memory wiped.
From there on out, it's one madcap situation after another,
as Huck is made to promise that if anything happens to
Nena, he will be sure to get the fridges and dryer out of
the city limits. However, the more he learns, the less
sense it all makes, until the true purpose of the warnings
becomes all too clear. There's a government conspiracy to
use safety as a way to take away freedoms and keep the
populace "under control." That the fate of the world rests
on the shelves of a tiny refrigerator, that holds the
evidence of the real purpose behind New Seattle's Heath and
Safety machinations, is just cheese on the pizza.
Sublime, surreal and very much tongue-in-cheek, Tim
Scott's novel is an amusing satire on what can happen
when a populace allows fear to shackle them to what should
be common sense rules. There is also a deeper meaning, that
sometimes in life if you want to truly live, it's all about
your choices and the chances you take. Plus memories, be
they good or bad, are mental, emotional pictures that
should be treasured and not lightly dumped. For anyone who
has ever sighed over the senseless "coffee is hot" suits
and grumbled over stupid human tricks on the road, this one
is sure to please. My only complaints are that there are
too many chase scenes and that the appliances have more 3-D
personality than their human counterparts. However, the
language is trippy, the safety messages are full of not-so-
subtle irony, and I for one would love to find the "Quantum
Physics Pizza Delivery Company" -- a quirky stop on your
way to "the Otherside."
Tim Scott’s Outrageous Fortune marked the debut of
one of the most wildly inventive writers to hit the sci-fi
scene in years. Now he returns with a hilarious yet
poignant novel of love, loss, and itinerant
appliances. “New Seattle Health and Safety.
Do not die for no reason.” This is the motto of a city so
obsessed with the danger of sharp corners that it has
almost forgotten how to live. But Huckleberry Lindbergh is
about to find his trip to the city most decidedly
unsafe. For a chance encounter leads him into the
heart of a dark conspiracy. And in order to stop it, this
former cop is about to do something so unsafe—so
monumentally stupid—that its reverberations will be felt
all the way to the Pentagon.
Soon he is on the run
from more authorities than he has had hot meals, his
staunchest allies a bunch of feral fridges that give new
meaning to the words “chill out.” But sometimes a dose of
chaos is just what the doctor ordered, and Huck’s quest to
remain among the living teaches not only him but those
around him the true meaning of survival . . . in all its
forms.
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