Red is dead. Hot is in. Sweet and six feet long is legal, but smooth is no longer mandatory. Fast is good, good, good. Bigger is — yes — still better, and smarter is better yet.
The Left Foot Living Review
is a series of columns presented as newspaper-style articles from an ambiguous futuristic setting. It was written by Andrew Plotkin from 1995 to 2003.
The setting of LFLR is vague, described only as The City. The articles include reviews of new products, current fads in the city, scheduled events, and things that are just plain weird. One common element is 'field' technology, multipurpose force fields that can be used to change the appearance of things or provide Hard Light-style supports or pressure.
The tropes attracting attention in the foam include:
- 20 Minutes into the Future: The setting of The City, an unspecified place in an ambiguous future timeframe.
- ...And That Would Be Wrong: #37 mentions the possibility of setting up a potential field on your plate that would cause your peas to continually roll around in circles, then comments, "...naturally we would never recommend doing this at an important or serious dinner party. Naturally."
- Artificial Gravity: Gravity control is available, but only seems to be used for things like holding items on the bottom of two-sided shelves.
- Brain/Computer Interface: Various items mention 'neuroplugs' that connect to one's brain.
- Change Ringing: #3 gives a review of a CD by the Aslington Church Ringers, which includes a 20-minute version of change ringing. And a church-bell version of Cliffs of Dover.
- Dramatic Wind: Invoked by Moorcoats (#11), coats that are designed to flap around dramatically if even a small amount of wind hits them.
- Dress Code: Not so much for people but #9 discusses vehicular sumptuary laws - only emergency vehicles are allowed to be painted orange.
- Fossil Revival: #9 mentions a religious sect funding research to bring back dinosaurs, apparently with the intent of throwing rocks at them.
- Future Slang: "Foam" seems to roughly correspond to the general mental state of the City or a subgroup, similar to zeitgeist.
- Hard Light: Fields can act like this, supporting items like shelves or keeping ClackiBeads separated. They may not be visible while doing so.
- Hologram: Or, fields can act like this, providing a different appearance without any substance.
- Loophole Abuse: Attempted by orange car fans fighting the Dress Code sumptuary laws, above. Initial loopholes like photographic red/yellow dots were banned quickly, but there are currently court cases being fought over acceptable thickness of various styles of red and yellow stripes.
- Ludicrous Precision: #44 mentions "five nines" recycling. This would mean that 0.001% of material is not recycled - for every kilogram of material, only 10 milligrams can be wasted.To help achieve the legally mandated "five nines" recycling level by next year, dust shall henceforth be color-coded, whenever possible.
- Theremin: Thereminics (#38) are rings that you can use to make theremin-like music without an actual theremin.
- Thing-O-Meter: Some articles seem to discuss trade values of things that are not easily traded, such as body parts.Noses are up three points with a half-percent sharper. Ears, down six, attached lobes favored nine-to-seven.
- Twinkle Smile: One of the fads of The City.The Tooth Twinkle is exactly what you think it is. Smile! twing
- We Will Spend Credits in the Future: Some articles mention credits as a unit of currency.
- We Will Use WikiWords in the Future: Many of the products being reviewed are named like this, such as BitiBeads.
