Player Piano

Kurt Vonnegut

Language: English

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American Classics Collections & Anthologies Computers & Technology Fiction Prostitutes Satire And Humor Science Fiction & Fantasy Utopias

Publisher: Dell

Published: Sep 15, 1980

Description:

Player Piano is the debut novel from one of history's most innovative authors, published on Vonnegut's 100th birthday.

In Player Piano, the first of Vonnegut's wildly funny and deadly serious novels, automata have dramatically reduced the need for America's work force. Ten years after the introduction of these robot labourers, the only people still working are the engineers and their managers, who live in Ilium; everyone else lives in Homestead, an impoverished part of town characterised by purposelessness and mass produced houses.

Paul Proteus is the manager of Ilium Works. While grateful to be held in high regard, Paul begins to feel uneasy about his position - especially after a trip to Homestead. Eventually, Paul makes the decision to rebel against all he's been given, inciting seismic repercussions...

**'His black logic...gives us something to laugh about and much to fear' New York Times Book Review

Watch the documentary about his life - Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time - on Prime**

SUMMARY: Vonnegut’s first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a super computer and run completely by machines. Paul’s rebellion is vintage Vonnegut–wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.

Before winning international fame with Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut was a master of the drugstore paperback and the popular short story. This authoritative collection of his brilliant early work opens with Player Piano (1952), a Metropolis-like parable of breakneck technological innovation and its effect on those it robs of their livelihoods. The Sirens of Titan (1959), the interplanetary adventures of the world’s wealthiest and most despised man, is both a pulp-fiction space opera and a satire on the vanity of human striving. The confessions of a German-American double agent well placed among the Nazi elite, Mother Night (1962) is a cautionary tale with a famous moral: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” Here too are six of Vonnegut’s best short stories, gems that display his matchless talent for hilarious invention and caustic social criticism.

A companion volume, Kurt Vonnegut: Novels & Stories 1963–1973, collects Cat’s Cradle; God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater; Slaughterhouse-Five; Breakfast of Champions; and three short stories, including “Welcome to the Monkey House.”LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.