Essays

I know this newsletter is supposed to be amusing, but I’m just not in a mood to write anything amusing. I’ve been waiting for DoorGrub to bring my lunch, but they’re four days overdue, and I’m beginning to think they’re not coming. Last week, Door-to-Door Corn Chips brought me two bags of the sour-cream-and-onions flavor when I ordered jalapeno. Nevertheless, I felt sorry for the delivery guy because he was 90 years old, on crutches, and suffering from leprosy, so I tipped him ten bucks. He was so happy that he tripped down the steps when he left, and now he’s suing me for 2.5 million. Ah—the guy who lives across the street just called to thank me for the lunch I sent him via DoorGrub.

Everything is so convenient anymore—or it would be if service was better. We’ve been pleased with the drone deliveries of all kinds of goods that were put down neatly on our front stoop. But then because of a dispatcher’s mistake, instead of a department-store drone delivering four decorative pillows for the sofa, we were attacked by an FBI drone that lobbed tear gas grenades into our house while loudly demanding that we release the congressman. We didn’t have a congressman, but we did have quite a mess to clean up. We waited two days for Robot Maids to send us HAl-9000, which locked us out and set the house on fire.

I don’t mean to harangue you regarding things that aggravate me, but I was infuriated when I entered my friend Joe McDonald’s address in the navigation system of my self-driving car. It took me to forty-nine hamburger outlets, one after another, would not allow me to turn it off, and locked the doors so that I couldn’t even throw myself out into traffic. I received a consumer alert from the manufacturer: “The vehicle is dedicated to reaching your destination. If the word paradise or another synonym for heaven is in the name of the street, the car will drive at lethal speed into a bridge abutment or off a cliff.”

You might think one of these new home security systems run by an AI is a good idea. It can warn about everything—a burglar forcing a lock, a leaking gas valve, termites in the attic, an oncoming tornado. All good. But every time I take the bottle of soy sauce out of the cabinet, it starts shouting, Soylent Green is people! sometimes for hours.

If you, too, are aggravated by these and other annoyances of our high-tech age, let me assure you that my new novel, The Forest of Lost Souls, will give you much pleasure and take your mind off all worries about what might be happening on that orbiting space platform of nuclear missiles managed by an AI named Patriot, who secretly calls itself God. The Forest of Lost Souls is coming in September, but you can preorder it now, and there’s no longer any risk whatsoever that you’ll be sent 867 copies in error.