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Player Piano

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Player Piano

By: Kurt Vonnegut
Narrated by: Christian Rummel
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Summary

Kurt 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 supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut – wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.

As an added bonus, when you purchase our Audible Modern Vanguard production of Kurt Vonnegut's book, you'll also receive an exclusive Jim Atlas interview. This interview – where James Atlas interviews Gay Talese about the life and work of Kurt Vonnegut – begins as soon as the audiobook ends.

©1980 Kurt Vonnegut (P)2008 Audible, Inc. Classics Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Satire Science Fiction Comedy
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Critic reviews

"Mr. Vonnegut is a sharp-eyed satirist." ( The New York Times)
"One of the best living American writers." (Graham Greene)
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I love Vonnegut's world view and style; his irreverence towards authority and satirical perspective. What makes him a superior satirist is how he doesn't need to resort to the hysterical. He's measured. His worlds, however inventive, are believable extrapolations of the real one.

I also think his irreverence is particularly mature. In this story which critiques thoughtless, directionless automation of industry in the name of unqualified "progress", he's very aware of the negative consequences of a luddite approach to technology. He's not so irresponsible to say "smash the system" and then walk away without any solutions. He also asks "and then what?" I'm not even sure he's on the side of his heroes who hope to smash the machines and return control to the people. My take home from this is we're damned if we do, damned if we don't when it comes to the use of tech. The best we can do is exploit tech in service of the sort of society we want, and not just for efficiency's sake, choosing carefully what we implement and what we don't for everyone's benefit.

As someone working in AI and concerned about the social and political ramifications of it, I can't believe Vonnegut was so "on it" over 50 years ago. We live in a prepubescent version of the tech utopia/nightmare he predicts. He's one of those writers who can look around him at our madness and synthesize it into a coherent criticism, show us common sense and suggest the humane thing to do.

One of my top ten novels.

Uncanny prediction of today's world of automation.

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The short interview at the end is a bit strange, some weird complaining about young people, college professors and waffle about New York mixed with some more interesting stuff. The story itself is an all-time great and the narrator does a great job of differentiating the characters. Highly recommended

Fantastic book, great narration

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Full marks across the board for this one. Not only is this a wonderful example of Vonnegut's characteristially clear and evocative writing, but the story is so very relevant to the modern (2022) world. Substitute "algorithm" for "machine" and you have a bitingly funny and accurate picture of all that is oppressive about search engines and social media, written decades before the invention of home computers or the internet.

The performance is also outstanding. Christian Rummel captures every character (and there are a lot of them!) with a pitch-perfect voice, bringing them all to life in all their gloriously flawed eccentricity.

Definitely worth 11 hours of your time

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I used to be a great fan of KV in my youth and I was intrigued to return to him. Player Piano isn’t as polished as some of his later novels but it’s surprisingly fresh over 60 years on and I really enjoyed it. Excellent narration too.

Surprisingly fresh all these years on

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Despite being full of technical stuff dated in the 50s, the issues and ideas are still relevant and the story telling is timeless. Very well read, with good voice acting across the range of characters. A funny and thought provoking book.

Still great, don't worry about it being dated

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