The title story is about a number of humans who have been re-programmed to become Speakers or Singers for the privileged house owners where they are tied to the wall in the entertainment room. Even if fully programmed - including boundless docility and admiration for their owners - the narrator still manages to have some basic conscious reflections - including on the concept of sexual arousal. The story is weird, the context extreme, the reality a far-away possibility of shaping human behaviour to the need and desires of 'the few'.
In another story - Elliott Spencer - the language is limited to words, simple thoughts and concept that gradually turn into more mature sentences as the subjects in the story get better educated. It requires effort - and sometimes patience - from the reader to understand what is happening, with the unusual language slowly becoming the idiom that programmes the reader as well.
Not everything works, but that does not really matter. These are exercises in style, trying new linguistic forms to suit the stories' science-fiction like situations, but this futuristic vision has less to do with technology or science than with human nature, its absurd existence, its unpredictable and predictable actions.
It doesn't come close in quality to "Lincoln In The Bardo", but readers who are in for something new, will certainly enjoy this.
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