(urth) This week in Google Alerts: The rules do not apply to this review of _Home Fires_

[Gwern Branwen]

http://littleredreviewer.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/gene-wolfes-home-fires-rules-just-dont-apply-here/

> ...I’d like to tell you about a specific non-spoilery example of Wolfe’s world-building through dialog instead of exposition, because I immediately jumped to a conclusion, which of course turned out to be wrong, and then I felt like a character in the book.
>
> Skip is a high flying attorney, and he has a secretary, who in turn has an assistant, who in turn has a helper.  Skip’s law firm has what appears to be an old fashioned style “secretary pool”, and during a phone conversation the employees in the pool are referred to by first name only, as no one has bothered to learn their last names. My first thought was what kind of a sexist, almost Mad Men-esque future Earth is this?  When did Gene Wolfe start writing like Heinlein (who you know I love), to whom female employees are all “girls” and usually helpless assistants?  Wolfe is not having a Heinlein moment.  This is a future Earth where there are too many people, and not enough jobs.  Where companies (and not just Skip’s law firm) are compelled by government regulations to hire so many people, even if there is no work for that person to do.  This is a future Earth where low unemployment is more important than efficiency, and where resources are so scarce that adults will do anything to get and keep a job, including sitting in a secretarial pool all day waiting for a memo to type....

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gwern
http://www.gwern.net