The organic and innocent continue to fare ill in the electronic age: a couple years ago, an electrical outage in downtown Toronto was caused by a raccoon that got into a power station - the electricians repairing the station found its fried remains.
The opposite to Player Piano would be Samuel Butler's Erewhon, a late 19th century satirical novel, whose narrator finds an apparently utopian society on a remote Pacific Island. The society is immediately suspicious of the explorer, because of his mechanical watch. The society had decided, some thousand years before, to destroy all their advanced machines, fearing that as machines progressed, humans would be reduced to slaves of the machine.
It's quite a subtle book - it starts out like the genre of adventure/exploration book popular in the late Victorian era, and the satire is revealed gradually.
Thanks for this review. I read Player Piano when my youngest brother was assigned it in high school in the mid 1970s. It stuck with me in a way many books haven’t. I’ve watched for years now as technology has replaced what were once good paying jobs, with mixed feelings. It seems like a combination of man’s natural inventive and curious nature mixed with greed to constantly introduce “labor saving” or more efficient ways of working.
When I read this book for the first time many years ago as part of Vonnegut's Library of America novels collections, the AI craze had yet to begin, but I still recognized the idea of the fear of automation that spurred the novel's creation, as well as the more recent conservative nativist fear of being "replaced" by immigrants, evident in the story. Where the Ghost Shirt Society failed, MAGA achieved at least short term success based on these same sort of psychological fears.
It's not my favorite of his novels ("God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" is that), but it's arguably his most tightly plotted and "realistically" feeling of them, and it achieves exactly the feelings and concerns in the reader that it was meant to conceive.
The organic and innocent continue to fare ill in the electronic age: a couple years ago, an electrical outage in downtown Toronto was caused by a raccoon that got into a power station - the electricians repairing the station found its fried remains.
The opposite to Player Piano would be Samuel Butler's Erewhon, a late 19th century satirical novel, whose narrator finds an apparently utopian society on a remote Pacific Island. The society is immediately suspicious of the explorer, because of his mechanical watch. The society had decided, some thousand years before, to destroy all their advanced machines, fearing that as machines progressed, humans would be reduced to slaves of the machine.
I’ve never read it but have thought I should.
It's quite a subtle book - it starts out like the genre of adventure/exploration book popular in the late Victorian era, and the satire is revealed gradually.
Just read this book and it is my least favorite Vonnegut book… so far.
Like all Vonnegut, it’s not for everyone. But I got a kick out of it.
Oh, I love Vonnegut. I shook his hand. Player Piano just didn’t do it for me.
Thanks for this review. I read Player Piano when my youngest brother was assigned it in high school in the mid 1970s. It stuck with me in a way many books haven’t. I’ve watched for years now as technology has replaced what were once good paying jobs, with mixed feelings. It seems like a combination of man’s natural inventive and curious nature mixed with greed to constantly introduce “labor saving” or more efficient ways of working.
I always enjoy your thoughtful work.
I’ve been working, bit by bit, on a piece comparing Player Piano to AI.
I think we need a movie!
BTW, my novel essentially is an homage to Vonnegut. One of the characters is Killian Pike!
What a swell review. I enjoy your writing very much. Definitely will have to read this novel. Love the Panther paperback cover, too.
When I read this book for the first time many years ago as part of Vonnegut's Library of America novels collections, the AI craze had yet to begin, but I still recognized the idea of the fear of automation that spurred the novel's creation, as well as the more recent conservative nativist fear of being "replaced" by immigrants, evident in the story. Where the Ghost Shirt Society failed, MAGA achieved at least short term success based on these same sort of psychological fears.
It's not my favorite of his novels ("God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" is that), but it's arguably his most tightly plotted and "realistically" feeling of them, and it achieves exactly the feelings and concerns in the reader that it was meant to conceive.