Being a review of books read while travelling, rather than a review of travel books, in less than more than around 100 150 words.
Player Piano - Kurt Vonnegut
One of Vonnegut's earlier novels (published 1952), Player Piano may be as close as he came to the true dystopic tales of Orwell, Huxley, and Bradbury, though his prophetic warning certainly contained less mileage. It is perhaps one of the earlier science fictions to deal with the idea of a world in which the human workforce is replaced by machines, and is possibly unique in that it doesn't involve itself with the trite possibility of a robot uprising against human masters, but deals instead with the existential damage dealt to the now redundant workforce.
While we may have sidestepped Vonnegut's warning of a human revolution against automatisation, the essential question of how people assign value to the lives remains highly charged.
In typical Vonnegut style the story revolves around a depressed individual struggling (and failing) to make his own choices and being forced to react to pressures greater than himself. Player Piano may miss some of Vonnegut's later skill with irony, but is still a story convincingly, and humanly, told.
Player Piano - Kurt Vonnegut
One of Vonnegut's earlier novels (published 1952), Player Piano may be as close as he came to the true dystopic tales of Orwell, Huxley, and Bradbury, though his prophetic warning certainly contained less mileage. It is perhaps one of the earlier science fictions to deal with the idea of a world in which the human workforce is replaced by machines, and is possibly unique in that it doesn't involve itself with the trite possibility of a robot uprising against human masters, but deals instead with the existential damage dealt to the now redundant workforce.
While we may have sidestepped Vonnegut's warning of a human revolution against automatisation, the essential question of how people assign value to the lives remains highly charged.
In typical Vonnegut style the story revolves around a depressed individual struggling (and failing) to make his own choices and being forced to react to pressures greater than himself. Player Piano may miss some of Vonnegut's later skill with irony, but is still a story convincingly, and humanly, told.
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