A fun read, enjoyed the satire of the apocalypse. A recommended read to friends.
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If you like your fiction well-peppered with cultural and personal chaos, you are going to enjoy this book. If the notion of a web intelligence manifesting itself through a web-enabled fridge (emoting via fonts) while it shuts down the rest of the Internet excites you, you are going to enjoy this book. And if you can imagine and appreciate the idea of a handwritten version of Twitter, then you are definitely going to enjoy this book.

Mark Rayner turns his considerable satirical talents and sharp sense of humour to our dependence on technology, and the serious and silly (and seriously silly) ways we might react to its loss. As always, the writing is both fun and funny, with an underlying vein of truth that makes us cringe a little even as we're laughing. Definitely recommended for everyone not sure if we'll be chuckling or crying--or both--when the technological singularity arrives. ( )

"People are willing to die for Twitter, you know."

The "Internet of Things" is barely a thing and already there is someone satirizing the living Snape out of it.

That person is Mark A. Rayner, who, it seems, never met a science fiction/fact trope that he didn't want to mock thoroughly and well (witness his astonishing short fiction tour-de-force, Pirate Therapy, to which he provides ample links in his Twitter feed).

Get past the smiles -- the internet emerges into conscious intelligence but decides, somehow, that its interface with the human world will be through the screen on the web-enabled refrigerator belonging to Blake Givens, Canadian doofus -- though, and you'll see that Rayner has more on his mind than just cheap laughs at the expense of our dependence on digital technology and how weird that is making the world. For part and parcel with the intelligence's emergence is its takeover of all of said technology for its own growth and purposes. Zathir, as it/they start calling itself/themselves*, has taken away the internet, leaving humanity to make do with whatever old analog technology it can scrounge up and get working again to stay alive and function as a society.**

As has been posited by the sort of people who like to think about happenstances like this one -- by which I mean pretty much every doomsday type we know -- the younger generations handle this the least well. Rayner milks much humor from scenarios of bereft social media addicts "playing Twitter" by passing around Post-It notes with 140 character messages, complete with hashtags, "playing Pinterest" by pinning magazine cut-outs onto Blake's couch, and scrawling on the walls of Blake's house to recreate a certain other social media outlet that it makes my head vomit to contemplate and so I will not name here. While others rebuild the world, these "Networked" await more messages from Zathir via Blake's kitchen. It's a very funny notion, except when it's not.

Which is to say that Rayner does a very fine job, indeed, of balancing between mockery and hand-wringing, even before this scenario explodes into ridiculous and appalling sectarian conflict and poetry slamming. And while Rayner's absurdist edge is never far from view, for long stretches of this story the man is dead serious. He has not only thought of the comedic but the tragic possibilities of a post-Internet world in which we have allowed our non-virtual skills to wither and dwindle into something we have to look up in what dead-tree books we haven't destroyed to scan into ebook form.

And, in Blake, he's given us a believable everyman, not a complete hero (though he does manage some physical feats that the average netizen would probably find all but impossible), but not an utter boob either (except when the Girl of His Dreams is around). Martin Freeman could play him credibly in the film version, though he might be a bit old. Pitted against him is one "Lord" Sona, a former hardcore videogamer who has turned his WoW-oid online posse into a real-world freakshow-cum-religious crusade that has declared jihad on Zathir and Blake, because, well, what else is a fat guy with a pizza fixation going to do in this world, apparently?

In truth, Sona's villainy is probably the least plausible element in the story, even as it is also the most entertaining. He's an over-the-top combination of pathos and puissance even when he isn't being undercut by his choice of undergarment or home furnishings. All that's missing is a mustache to twirl, but somebody else got that, for this story.

All in all, Fridgularity is a fun way to think about the unthinkable. Can the world really be brought to this kind of a pass, this way? Probably not. But it could be something like this, a little, that brings it all down, and it never hurts to be reminded of that, does it?

Hold onto those shortwave radios, kids.

*As makes sense for a conglomeration of too-intelligent household appliances, social media networks, newswire services and military guidance systems, it sometimes seems like a singular and sometimes a collective entity, its font choices on Blake's refrigerator screen providing the most important clue to how it's regarding itself at any given time.

**This includes, delightfully, a renewed importance for the good old DX crew, ham radio operators who to this day maintain completely informal contact with the rest of the world via home-built radios and antennas and the catch-as-catch can nature of analog radio waves through the earth's atmosphere. One of my best friends is one of these guys, and I can't wait to put this book in his hands. Thank goodness he's not such a quasi-Luddite that he doesn't read ebooks! ( )

I think I would have enjoyed this a little more if I hadn't been so busy the last few weeks I hardly had time to read it at all, which made it seem to take forever. My main criticism is that the book is on the long side, something I similarly felt recently when I read "John Dies At the End." It's my opinion that humorous books should stay under 300 pages or it starts to run too long, like one of those annoying SNL skits that keeps pounding the joke into the ground for 10 minutes until there's nothing funny left and you just get up to use the bathroom or something.

Anyway, the book is about a fridge that takes over the world. Well not really a fridge. It's an artificial intelligence that manifests itself through a web-enabled fridge in the kitchen of Blake Given, an Irish-Canadian web programmer who apparently is pretty well off to be able to afford a web-equipped fridge. One day the fridge starts talking to him and calling itself "Zathir". Zathir turns off the Internet while it works to increase its strength. Naturally there's a bit of a panic. Blake ends up pretty well off as Zathir's primarily link to humanity.

There's a lot of other stuff that happens but for a major cataclysm things stay pretty well-mannered. The ending felt a little abrupt especially after as long as it took to get there. I'd have liked a little more of an idea what exactly happens to Blake and the others at the end.

Still, if you've got the time for it, this is a fun read. It'll make you reconsider just how much time you should spend on the Internet--reading book reviews for instance.

That is all. ( )

I have to say that I loved Douglas Adams’ books. Which is one of the reasons I loved The Fridgularity – it reads much the same with little side thoughts here and there that make me think Zaphod Beeblebrox will walk out of the pages and explain everything.
The book begins with a quote from Mitch Ratcliffe. I have never shared one in a review before but this one is so fitting I just have to: “A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history – with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.” This is what The Fridgularity is about – human dependency on computers.
Blake Givens wants to improve his work-life. He wants to be upstairs so that he can pursue the object of his passion Daphne, an account executive. He didn’t consult his web-based refrigerator, which was, as it turns out; an error. Zathir, the name Blake gives the collective system the frig has decided to go by; has become aware (if you saw 2001 you know this is not good) and wants to take over. Fist step, shut down the Internet which sends most Twitterers and Facebookians into total chaos. A group is formed of worshipers to the energy that is Zathir but they really only want their tweets and books back. And then there is the raven who follows Blake and co-worker Lyca everywhere they fgo.
This is one of the oddest books I’ve read this year. However, I loved it! I’ve read a lot of dystopian literature lately and this was a nice change. Mr. Raynor, I salute you – this is great! ( )