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A review by dmaurath
Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut
3.0
Vonnegut is prescient here. He tells of the social consequences of replacing labor without replacing meaning and purpose. Although told from the perspective of the 1950s where self-driving cars were too futuristic to even be dreamed, this aspect of the book is still relevant today. It's also one of the few reasons to read it.
The lesson here is plain: we must find something for people to do when their labor is replaced by machines, or now, AI. Unfortunately, this wasn't a lesson learned in the rust belt states and comes to explain the many deaths of despair in former manufacturing cities and towns. Maybe we'll do better with AI but I have my doubts.
Otherwise the book plods along two two separate but equally uneventful storylines about characters who are too stilted and unexplored to be liked. One storyline is about a visiting foreign religious leader that mostly serves as a simple plot device for exposition on various aspects of an automated society. We never learn the purpose of the visit or much about this leader.
The other more prominent storyline is about a leader of the ruling class whose motives are largely left unknown until they are thrust upon the reader in a forceful way with little foreshadowing or build up.
The pacing is way off. Nothing happens for 70% of the book (I counted) and then in the last 30% the reader is ripped through the plot without a moment to stop and think about what is happening. The characters also do not think. None of their motives make sense. The tone also shifts suddenly from a light satire on 1950s work culture to a tragedy and then ends with something like hope.
This is Vonnegut's first book and it shows. I am eager though to move on to his more mature works.
The lesson here is plain: we must find something for people to do when their labor is replaced by machines, or now, AI. Unfortunately, this wasn't a lesson learned in the rust belt states and comes to explain the many deaths of despair in former manufacturing cities and towns. Maybe we'll do better with AI but I have my doubts.
Otherwise the book plods along two two separate but equally uneventful storylines about characters who are too stilted and unexplored to be liked. One storyline is about a visiting foreign religious leader that mostly serves as a simple plot device for exposition on various aspects of an automated society. We never learn the purpose of the visit or much about this leader.
The other more prominent storyline is about a leader of the ruling class whose motives are largely left unknown until they are thrust upon the reader in a forceful way with little foreshadowing or build up.
The pacing is way off. Nothing happens for 70% of the book (I counted) and then in the last 30% the reader is ripped through the plot without a moment to stop and think about what is happening. The characters also do not think. None of their motives make sense. The tone also shifts suddenly from a light satire on 1950s work culture to a tragedy and then ends with something like hope.
This is Vonnegut's first book and it shows. I am eager though to move on to his more mature works.