What stays just as much the same is that this family is well and truly fucked up. The juxtaposition of the different stories covering the same ground is quite striking. It's unfair of me to present this as Brown's view of the future. Clearly what he's doing is working repeatedly through a number of concerns. It feels as though what Brown should really have done was written a novel.
Science fiction is the one genre where human beings' relationship to their world is explored.
It's the one genre where this is assumed to be within human control and thus worth talking about. I think Brown has abandoned this strength to produce relationship stories in a science fiction setting. Characters drive hover cars rather than ordinary cars, tourist resorts are set on exotic planets rather than in exotic countries and the mornings interstellar flight from the space port can be seen zooming overhead. The plots are well and truly melodramatic. A melodrama is like a huge blow swung at the reader, it's likely to miss and have very little effect, but if it hits the mark then it hits hard.