Tik-Tok/A...E

A

As I move

The first three words of the novel make it clear that Isaac Asimov will be a major figure throughout, even though he's never mentioned by name as a writer. Sladek used the name "I-click As-i-move" as the author of his Asimov parody story "Broot Force".[1]

An Inspector Calls

The 1945 play by J.B. Priestley, in which a mysterious detective coaxes out a family's guilty secrets after the death of one of their employees. Despite its resemblance to the familiar "questioning all the suspects in the drawing room" type of plot, it's not a murder mystery but more of a social critique, implicating the family for their unexamined privilege and predicting that lack of empathy will one day lead to "fire and blood and anguish"—an appropriate choice for Tik-Tok, who is at this point just starting to acknowledge his anger at humans but hasn't yet committed a crime.

the Fairmont police

The Studebaker storyline doesn't seem to be set in any specific part of the country, but it's probably not a coincidence that there is a small town called Fairmont in Sladek's home state of Minnesota.

Sauce Harpeau

Not a real food item; harpeau is French for "harpoon" or "grappling hook".

The poor we have always with us

Matthew 26:11, Mark 14:7, and John 12:8. Sometimes wrongly cited as a reason to be complacent about inequality.[2]

Wedgwood

An English brand of fine china.

asimov circuits ... three laws

Asimov's fictional Three_Laws_of_Robotics prescribed that (in descending order of priority) a robot must not cause or allow harm to humans, must obey humans, and must protect itself from harm. In Asimov's stories, these rules were literally hard-wired into nearly every robot brain, more or less as Tik-Tok describes here. But as previously mentioned in Roderick, Sladek doesn't find that idea very plausible.

Although Tik-Tok strongly suspects that the "asimov circuits" don't physically exist and are more like a religious belief, the book never takes a firm stand on this question—leaving open the possibility that Tik-Tok is just psychologically unusual, or that the asimov circuits might have worked at one point but are no longer reliable since robots have become more complex (and, as Tik-Tok mentions in the next chapter, more cheaply produced).

a fencepost ... an animal perched upon it, ears twitching

A stain on a wall that ambiguously suggested different shapes was a recurring image in Roderick.

Calvary roses

The "rose of Calvary" is a traditional Christian metaphor for the death and resurrection of Jesus. Here, it's just a posh variety of flowers.

As you can see, it's a nursery rhyme

To see which nursery rhyme it is, you'll have to wait until the painting is finally described at the end of the third chapter.

B

mink lapels on a jacket of diamondback rattlesnake, a neon tie with a wicker suit

The long list of future garments in this paragraph might be considered an attempt to outdo the then-recently-deceased past master of ridiculous science fiction couture, Philip K. Dick. Never very interested in detailed world-building, but always confident that people in every era will take for granted things that would look pretty silly to people in previous eras, Dick took full advantage of his non-visual medium to throw in offhanded references to styles like "mohair poncho, apricot-colored felt hat, argyle ski socks and carpet slippers"[3] without distracting too much from his plots.

Sladek's fashion reverie here works a little differently: it's not so much about the arbitrariness of mainstream tastes, but a reminder that the callous elites who will shape Tik-Tok's view of humanity are very, very rich and very, very bored. Despite his naive admiration for these swells, Tik-Tok is also learning early on that humans are massively overconfident and have no real respect for their own mortality—as evidenced by the animated news-interpreting dress that's programmed to illustrate the end of the world as "a fine sunset".