The Used People Lot — Context and Discussion

Tooth Telephones and Everyday Technology

One of the story’s most striking authorial choices is the integration of communication technology into the body. The narrator uses a ‘tooth telephone,’ activated by pressing his tongue against a tooth, and the operator ‘aches’ the number into Jenny’s tooth. This bodily interface is presented without wonder or explanation, as if it were as mundane as a landline. Fang’s casual treatment of the device—the operator says ‘I’ll ache it for you’—emphasizes how thoroughly technology has been naturalized in this world. The tooth radio, too, is operated by rolling the tongue over the bottom of a tooth, allowing the narrator to listen to blues music while sitting in his broken car. These details are not plot devices but texture: they show a society where the body itself is a platform for consumer technology, and where personal communication is both intimate and mediated by machinery.

The Language of Consumer Despair

Fang’s narrator speaks in a register that mixes 1950s slang with futuristic exasperation. Phrases like ‘a fine thermokettle of fish’ and ‘weeping over it wasn’t going to do any good’ ground the story in a recognizable vernacular, even as the setting includes radar repellants and 40-year car pacts. The narrator’s financial plight—‘I’m so broke on account of these repair bills I’ve been living on macaroni concentrate’—is rendered in the same tone as his romantic woes. Jenny’s response, ‘Don’t come to me with your troubles,’ echoes a familiar sitcom dynamic, but the context of a broken-down future car gives it a satirical edge. Fang uses this diction to critique consumer culture: the narrator’s identity is so tied to his car that its failure triggers a social and emotional crisis. The language never rises to melodrama; instead, it stays in a key of low-grade panic, making the absurdity of the situation feel credible.

Setting as Social Commentary

The story’s setting is sketched through offhand references rather than exposition. The narrator’s car is stuck on the ‘fifth level expressway,’ suggesting a multi-tiered urban infrastructure. He signed a ‘customary 40-year pact for half my salary’ to pay for the Thunderflash, a detail that implies a society where long-term indenture for consumer goods is normal. The garage specialists work on the car for two days but cannot restore it to ‘the way it did new,’ hinting at planned obsolescence or the fragility of high-tech systems. Fang does not explain these elements; they are presented as background facts, which makes them more effective as world-building. The setting is not a backdrop but a mechanism that drives the plot: the narrator’s inability to afford repairs or a taxi isolates him, and his social standing depends on a functioning vehicle. By embedding these details in the narrator’s complaints, Fang makes the social critique feel organic rather than didactic.

Voice and the Unreliable Narrator

The narrator, Arnold, is our only window into the story, and his voice is both self-pitying and comically unaware. He describes his Thunderflash as ‘my wonderful red Thunderflash’ even as he admits it is worthless. He blames a drunk driver for his troubles but never considers his own role in signing a 40-year contract. His internal monologue is full of hyperbolic metaphors—‘not worth the electricity to atomize it to Kingdom Come’—that undercut his seriousness. Jenny’s petulant ‘Again?’ suggests this is a pattern, not a one-time crisis. Fang uses this first-person perspective to create irony: the reader may sympathize with Arnold’s plight while recognizing his myopia. The tooth telephone conversations, with their clipped dialogue and emotional distance, reinforce the sense that technology mediates human connection without improving it. Arnold’s final act of listening to blues music on his tooth radio is a moment of stasis, not resolution, leaving the story open-ended in a way that suits its satirical tone.

Fang’s story rewards attention to its small, telling details: the way a tooth telephone works, the offhand mention of a 40-year car pact, the narrator’s macaroni concentrate diet. These are not mere decoration but the building blocks of a coherent satirical world. Readers who enjoy mid-century science fiction’s focus on social critique will find much to appreciate here, especially in the interplay between futuristic technology and all-too-human frustration. The story’s brevity—around 5,000 words—makes it a quick read, but its implications linger.

Reading about that Thunderflash and its tooth-telephone reminded me of my grandfather’s old DeSoto, the smell of its vinyl seats and the way it defined his evenings. Angel's Egg — Reading Companion stirred that same quiet ache for things that carry our lives, their weight sometimes heavier than their utility. Both stories left me wondering why we let objects hold so much of who we are.