"PLAYER PIANO is a less earnest book than either CAESER'S COLUMN or

THE IRON HEEL, and a less serious one than BRAVE NEW WORLD, but what Mr. Vonnegut lacks in fervor he more than makes up in fun....Whether he is a trustworthy prophet or not, Mr. Vonnegut is a sharp-eyed satirist."
 (08/17/1952)

First novel by Kurt Vonnegut, published in 1952 and reissued in 1954 as Utopia 14. This anti-utopian novel employs the standard science-fiction formula of a futuristic world run by machines and of one man's futile rebellion against that world.

Vonnegut's spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines

PLAYER PIANO, Kurt Vonnegut's debut, marked the arrival of a wildly inventive and devilishly satiric voice in American letters. Set in a science fiction dystopia where society is almost entirely run by (and for) machines, Doctor Paul Proteus is one of the privileged few: the engineers that actually maintain the machines. However, he's increasingly disillusioned by the corporate mechanized reality, and eventually becomes the leader of secret revolutionary group known as The Ghost Shirt Society, dedicated to dismantling the machines and reasserting humanity's significance on the planet. However, in the end, their dream is threatened, not only by the machines themselves, but the follies and idiocy of human beings. Upon publication, PLAYER PIANO was considered a minor cult genre fiction novel, but its themes of absurdity, social disruption, and doomed idealism in a science-fiction reality would become significant tropes of Vonnegut's future work.

I remember being struck at how close Vonnegutt's predictions about society actually were. Now that I've reexamined them 20 years later, I am even more impressed. 

The basic premise of the story is that American industry is run by a tiny group of wealthy and powerful managers and engineers, while the vast majority of the population are stripped of their well-paying industrial jobs and forced to live as poor, powerless menials. 

These elite of managers and engineers live in closed, gated Orwellian communities, where they watch each other closely for the slightest hint of nonconformity or disloyalty to the system. 

Vonnegut shows how most managers and engineers have always had a contempt for the average American worker and have been looking for a way to replace them even before WW2. He thought that this would primarily be by automation (as opposed to simply shipping the jobs out of the country.) 

Vonnegut also assumed that agriculture would be totally mechanised by large corporations and the small farmer made extinct. 

There is also the eerie prediction that the President would be a man of low intelligence who would get elected on the basis of a "three hour television show." It would make no difference because there would be no connection between who was elected and who actually ran the country. Remember, this was in 1952.... 

Oh yes, he also predicted that no one would be able to get any job worth having without a graduate degree. 

I know that some people will say that this novel is dated based simply on the repeated mention of vacuum tubes (transistors were not in commercial use in 1952.) However, if you substitute "integrated circuit" or "computer chip" for every place he uses vacuum tube the obsolescence vanishes. Similarly, a modern reader may laugh at the idea of a computer large enough to fill Carlsbad Caverns. Believe me, even today the Cray supercomputers and their support equipment take up quite a bit of space.

All it needs is an update in computer nomenclature, and this could have been written yesterday. Think about it: How many craftsmen have been replaced by the kind of machines he describes? How many "engineers" are walking around today, who have never physically built anything? How useless is a high school diploma in today's job market? Planned obsolescence, artificial economies-The only thing he got wrong was the world war (at least for now)

A lot of people, even Vonnegut fans, probably haven't heard of this book, for whatever reasons. Vonnegut really doesn't discuss it that much, mostly because he dislikes the label of science-fiction, which this book, along with The Sirens of Titan and even Slaughterhouse-Five, clearly is.

Still, this book is a must for Vonnegut fans or even those interested in old science-fiction in the style of Orwell or Huxley. Those looking for Vonnegut's classic deadpan black humorist style won't find it here. The beginnings of it are here, however and Vonnegut's tale of Paul Proteus' rebellion against the oppressive government is still as entertaining and fascinating as it was years ago. Read with the aforementioned 1984 and Brave New World, this book provides a slight contrast by using a different tone and more humor, but the message is still the same, that technology will ruin us all and bring about our ultimate downfall.

By reading this fans can see how Vonnegut started out, and fortunately, unlike most writers' first novels, Vonnegut's initial effort is just as readable as his later works

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