Player Piano

One sentence synopsis... In a dystopian society (barely different from our own) that is nearly completely automized, a conflicted engineer questions the negative impact machines have on humanity. .

Read it if you like... sci-fi, ‘Westworld', Philip K. Dick. Read it if you hate (or at least hold serious reservations about) Amazon, Facebook, technology's overwhelming and unregulated place in our lives. .

Dream casting... it's themes are huge and scary but this novel is mostly hilarious. Therefore I propose Keegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele as spiritual leader the Shah of Bratpuhr and his translator, respectively.

Vonnegut never fails to deliver, this one in particular is incredible not only for being his first novel but also for remaining frighteningly relevant still today, over 70 years after it was written.


It blends two topics I've been rather interested in recently: what will the progress of AI do to the average man and his previous way of life and the cyclical nature of social revolutions.


As in Zamiatyn's We, Vonnegut reminds us we can't possibly foresee what the end of this whole process will be:


“And that left Paul. ‘To a better world,' he started to say, but he cut the toast short, thinking of the people of Ilium, eager to recreate the same old nightmare. He shrugged. ‘To the record,' he said, and smashed the empty bottle on a rock. Von Neumann considered Paul and then the broken glass. ‘This isn't the end, you know,' he said. ‘Nothing ever is, nothing ever will be–not even Judgment Day.' ‘Hands up,' said Lasher almost gaily. ‘Forward March'”