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Copy/paste the text below into your blog. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9597.Player_Piano?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Player Piano" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1166031128m/9597.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9597.Player_Piano?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Player Piano</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/998584.Kurt_Vonnegut">Kurt Vonnegut</a><br/><br/> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/14246993?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a> rating: 5 of 5 stars<br/>This one and Mother Night are my two favorite Vonnegut books. In 'Man without a country' he laughs about the fact that this book had him classified as a science fiction author, although it happens to be about Schenectady New York during the 1950's and contains barely any fantasy elements or speculative ideas about the future. It's about all the conflict and change that comes with technological development, putting great numbers of people out of work and leaving an isolated handful of others with the responsibility of keeping the machines running. Vonnegut is very split on the issue. The protagonist is an engineer, and I think that coming from a background in science KV had a great deal of respect for the profession and what it had the ability to create. On the other hand, he has said that he considers himself a luddite and pays tribute to the original luddites who smashed their mechanized looms in order to stay employed. Usually technological development is incorporated into a grand narrative of liberation in which people are freed from their labors by the triumph of the human intellect. Talking about the dark side of the story, that at least some of the 'liberated' are always left out in the cold to deal with unemployment and poverty, could get you labeled as a communist sympathizer, or even a science fiction author as the case may be. Part of what I like about Player Piano is that it came out before Vonnegut had fully developed his style and has a more 'conventional' feel to it compared to Slaughterhouse Five or Breakfast of Champions. Some people might not like it as much as those books for the same reason. Still, if you like his other books I think you should definitely pick this one up at some point. It's a book about social order and revolution with a great twist right at the end. <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/862731?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>