I’ll start: the Doomsday Book, written in the early 1990s by Connie Willis. Set in the 2050s, when humanity has invented time travel and advanced medicine. I have never read a book set in any time period in which landline telephones play such a constant and primary role.
On practically every page, characters are placing landline calls, missing them because they were too far from the ringer, installing landlines, searching for telephone numbers, calling 50 different numbers to try to reach someone in an unknown location, writing down phone numbers, being unable to place calls because lines were engaged. It would be an excessive amount of text about telephones for a book set in the 90s, but it’s really jarring in the future setting.
In her defense, she does drop a line about England trying to withdraw from the “EC” so props there.
by lascriptori