The first day of spring had come to the suburb, bringing its subtle but unmistakable signs…The recording that played through the neighborhood speakers was different, for one thing. It had lost its spooky and desolate sound.
Couple of things about the opening paragraph of Chapter One are worth noting. One, the singular use of the word “suburb.” You don’t that very often. Usually, unless it is made clear it is a reference to a particular suburb, the preferred term is plural. Two, a spooky-sounding recording plays throughout the entire suburb? What’s up with that? It quickly becomes clear just a paragraph in (not including the short Prologue) that is not any suburb with which any reader is familiar.
“WONDER BABIES are here! Be the first family on your block to raise a WONDER BABY!”
As the narrator informs us: nothing in the history of human procreation had ever been so exciting. Wonder Babies—who prefer the term Exponential Generation—are blessed with charm, intelligence. They do have one extremely annoying habit, however. Well, more than merely annoying. Disruptive and troubling, in fact. They will literally allow nothing to keep them from forwarding their questions, no matter how embarrassing the answers may prove.
Martin sighed and tilted his head back, gazing at the network of steel girders that held up the immense enclosing their suburb.
For the record, The Sky Inside was published after the release of The Simpsons Movie, but before Stephen King’s Under the Dome. One might say that the years 2007-2009 was a golden age for stories about people living beneath a dome. What do we know so far from these three quotes? Wherever the heck Martin lives is one truly freaky place: music plays across an entire suburb located beneath a glass dome where Wonder Babies are the hottest thing going.
“The Alldog. Large or small, sleek or fuzzy—all the dogs you ever want rolled into one. Contents: one Alldog, owners manual, and reset chip. Runs on two Everlite long-life rechargeable batteries. Batteries not included. The Alldog is the perfect pet and particularly good with children. Do not place your Alldog in a strong magnetic field. Some assembly required.”
Martin is not particularly impressed with the gift his parents give him on his thirteenth birthday. At first. Once he starts substituting alternative chips for the factory installed on, the relationship really takes off and Chip becomes a vital part of the narrative. Yes, Martin names his computer-chip-operated dog, Chip. He’d probably get along quite well with Detective Murdoch who as a child named his stuffed bear, “Bear.”
“We finished Peter Pan…Peter is a lawyer working for an agency that investigates companies for tax evasion…My favorite character was Tinkerbell. Tinkerbell works in advertising, so she can do magic. Captain Hook tried to make Peter lose his job, so Tinkerbell ran a thirty-second spot on television about how great Peter was.”
So, at least, not everything about this strange futuristic domed suburb where snotty little Wonder Babies are everywhere and dogs are robots isn’t completely dystopic. At least they have finally managed to do the impossible: a modernized reinterpretation of Peter Pan that actually sounds worth watching.
