Player Piano

"The Mechanical Piano" is Kurt Vonnegut's debut novel, a dystopia depicting America after World War III: an automated paradise where all the work is done by intelligent machines and engineers and managers are in charge. Other people, even if they are well-fed and wealthy, lose the meaning of life: they have nothing to do under the new world order. But is it possible to change this somehow, is it possible to return people to a sense of their own significance and dignity? A successful, rich and influential engineer, Paul Proteus, who belongs to the privileged class, dares to make such an attempt and, having joined a revolutionary movement aimed at overthrowing the managerial oligarchy, falls into a whirlpool of dizzying, bizarre and sometimes comical, sometimes tragic events.

In its attempt to glimpse the future, "The Mechanical Piano," a funny yet serious novel about the triumph of an age of technology that has rendered humans almost useless, is a sharp satire on progress gone out of control.