Crosstalk

I adored this romantic comedy coupled with a focus on the pervasiveness of nonstop social media and information overload.

Connie Willis is an author who often invokes the theme of miscommunications - sentences only half spoken, misunderstood, never conveyed, conveyed too late, or lost in dreams. In this book, she takes the idea a bit further and explores what happens when there is too much communication - not only the inundation of thoughts on facebook, twitter, and texting, and their instantaneous transmission, but to the idea of telepathy itself.

Readers may also recognize this premise from Patrick Ness’s “Chaos Walking” series, a dystopia in which living creatures are constantly bombarded with each other's thoughts. Willis takes a different approach: while her book may be characterized as a fantasy or perhaps science fiction, it is much closer to “real life.” And it is full of humor even though it has suggestions of the dark repercussions of too much information and lack of privacy. The tragic as well as comedic consequences of communicating too much or too little serves to provide dramatic tension as well as sociological commentary.

Briddey Flannigan and her boyfriend Trent Worth both work at Commspan, a smartphone company that is a rival of Apple. After a whirlwind relationship, Trent has talked Briddey into getting an EED - a minor surgical procedure that “increases your ability to connect emotionally with your partner.”

The results are not what they planned.

Briddey finds herself suddenly connected telepathically not to Trent but to C.B. Schwartz, a reclusive technician at Commspan.

C.B. has actually been working on a phone that reduces one’s connectivity: a “sanctuary phone” that lets you politely block calls you don’t want. He explains to Briddey:

“Commspan promises . . . more communication. But that isn’t what people want. They’ve got way too much already - laptops, smartphones, tablets, social media. They’ve got connectivity coming out their ears. There’s such a thing as being too connected, you know, especially when it comes to relationships. Relationships need less communication, not more.”

He illustrates his point with examples with which everyone can relate:

“If people really wanted to communicate, they’d tell the truth, but they don’t. . . . ‘No, I don’t think that dress makes you look fat.’ ’Of course I want to go.’ ‘Of course’ is a dead giveaway that you’re lying. ‘Of course I didn’t sleep with her.’ ‘Of course I like your family.’ ‘Of course you can trust me.’”

“And you know who people lie to the most? Themselves. They’re absolute masters of self-deception.”

Briddey comes to understand his latter point as well.

And when Briddey begins to hear the voices of other people, she learns something else. She tells C.B. how horrible the thoughts were that she overheard. C.B. replied:

“‘Actually, they were just your average [people] … Vulgar? Vindictive? Spiteful? Scheming? I’m afraid that’s what people sound like in the privacy of their own heads.’ He gave her a wry grin. ‘I told you it’s a cesspool in there. … They can say out loud the nice stuff they think…. Inside their heads is the only place the bad stuff can come out, which tends to make their thoughts disproportionately unpleasant. But also, people are brutish, hateful, greedy mean, manipulative, and cruel.

“But everyone can’t be awful.”

“You haven’t listened to them for as long as I have.”

The ensuing action, as Briddey tries to hide this unintended consequence of the EED, cope with the voices, and cope with Trent, turns into a first-class adventure story and race against time, as with Willis’s best fiction.

Evaluation: There is a reason Connie Willis has won so many awards - she has won eleven Hugo Awards and seven Nebula Awards —more major awards than any other writer! - and that she has such a rabid fan base. (I include myself in that category; her book Doomsday is on my list of top ten favorite books ever!) Her stories are just a delight.

This book is more social satire than historical science fiction, as some of her previous books. But like them, it is also a humorous look at modern management and mores, with a fairy tale overlay that includes a fairy godmother, and a prince in disguise. I have yet to be disappointed with Connie Willis!