Player Piano
| Player Piano | |
 First edition, hardcover | |
| Author | Kurt Vonnegut |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science Fiction |
| Publisher | Charles Scribner's Sons |
| Publication date | 1952 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| ISBN | NA |
Player Piano, author Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, was published in 1952. The dystopian story takes place in a near-future society that is almost totally mechanized, eliminating the need for human laborers. This widespread mechanization creates conflict between the wealthy upper class—the engineers and managers who keep society running—and the lower class, whose skills and purpose in society have been replaced by machines.
The novel is an example of soft science fiction, with an emphasis on sociological themes rather than the technology that makes this world possible. The book uses irony and sentimentality, which were to become a hallmark and to be developed further in later works.
In a 1973 interview Vonnegut discussed his inspiration to write the book:
I was working for General Electric at the time, right after World War Two, and I saw a milling machine for cutting the rotors on jet engines, gas turbines. This was a very expensive thing for a machinist to do, to cut what is essentially one of those Brancusi forms. So they had a computer-operated milling machine built to cut the blades, and I was fascinated by that. This was in 1949 and the guys who were working on it were foreseeing all sorts of machines being run by little boxes and punched cards. Player Piano was my response to the implications of having everything run by little boxes. The idea of doing that, you know, made sense, perfect sense. To have a little clicking box make all the decisions wasn't a vicious thing to do. But it was too bad for the human beings who got their dignity from their jobs.
In the same interview he acknowledges that he "cheerfully ripped off the plot of Brave New World, whose plot had been cheerfully ripped off from Eugene Zamiatin's We."
topPlayer Piano
The player piano is a self-playing piano, containing a pneumatic mechanism that plays on the piano action pre-programmed music via perforated paper rolls.
Player piano - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Player Piano, author Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, was published in 1952. The dystopian story takes place in a near-future society that is almost totally mechanized, eliminating the ...
Player Piano (novel) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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