Tik-Tok/F...J

F

("From childhood, Krishna...")

the caustic Ruritanian cartoonist

Ruritania, originally from The Prisoner of Zenda, is a generic fictional country that Sladek also used in Roderick.

not even Hornby can afford real servants

Although the extravagant lifestyles of many of the human characters in Tik-Tok (the Studebakers, an only slightly upper-middle-class suburban couple, live in pampered luxury; the Culpeppers have money to burn far beyond the wildest dreams of the plantation owners they're imitating) could be seen as just typical satirical exaggeration, there's also a practical angle: in this world, robots are much cheaper than human employees—and probably even cheaper than human slaves, since they can be mass-produced.

It is meat to be here

A joke on meet in the archaic sense of "appropriate". James Joyce in Ulysses:

The Jews in the wilderness and on the mountaintop said: It is meet to be here. Let us build an altar to Jehovah. The Roman, like the Englishman who follows in his footsteps ... gazed about him in his toga and he said: It is meet to be here. Let us construct a watercloset.[1]

G

("Great rejoicing in violence...")

H

("Hard by the lake shore...")

I

("In the awful art gallery...")

the Darkblaze Travel Agency

There's no way this name isn't a reference to something, but all I can find so far is an obscure poem by McDonald Clarke, "Lord Byron", which ends with these somewhat appropriate lines:

Guiding wild Genius on his way,
—By Passion's whirlwinds hurled astray—
And, by the dark blaze of its ray,
The Soul will steer her course, aright.

J

("Just take a good look...")