Hurrah for the Lensman reference. DeLamater.
I used to live and work in a town like that. There was a VERY overpriced convenience store/gas station. Other than that, it was a one hundred mile round trip in order to go to the grocery store, or pretty much any other store/service. Satellite was the only method to get internet service and that was severely capped at about 1-2 gigs a month. Depending on your service, you could pay up to $200 a month and speed was limited to about 500 kb/s. I never saw it but that was what it was rated for. Cloud cover would interfere with the signal. There was a period of time between 11:00pm to 7:00am where your usage did not count towards your cap.