QualityLand

QualityLand #1

by Marc-Uwe Kling

Willkommen in QualityLand! In der Zukunft läuft alles rund: Arbeit, Freizeit und Beziehungen sind von Algorithmen optimiert. QualityPartner weiß, wer am besten zu dir passt. Das selbstfahrende Auto weiß, wo du hinwillst. Und wer bei TheShop angemeldet ist, bekommt alle Produkte, die er bewusst oder unbewusst haben will, automatisch zugeschickt, ganz ohne sie bestellen zu müssen. Superpraktisch! Kein Mensch ist mehr gezwungen, schwierige Entscheidungen zu treffen — denn in QualityLand lautet die Antwort auf alle Fragen: o. k. Trotzdem beschleicht den Maschinenverschrotter Peter immer mehr das Gefühl, dass mit seinem Leben etwas nicht stimmt. Wenn das System wirklich so perfekt ist, warum gibt es dann Drohnen, die an Flugangst leiden, oder Kampfroboter mit posttraumatischer Belastungsstörung? Warum werden die Maschinen immer menschlicher, aber die Menschen immer maschineller? Marc-Uwe Kling hat die Verheißungen und das Unbehagen der digitalen Gegenwart zu einer verblüffenden Zukunftssatire verdichtet, die lange nachwirkt. Visionär, hintergründig — und so komisch wie die Känguru-Trilogie.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Humor, Dystopia, Audiobook, German Literature, Comedy

Audiobook

First published September 22, 2017

About the author

Marc-Uwe Kling wurde geboren. Er studierte an der Großen Akademie von Lagado, wie man ein Haus vom Dach her nach unten baut. Er hat über seinen Mitbewohner, ein kommunistisches Känguru, drei kapitalismuskritische Bücher geschrieben, welche sich total gut verkaufen. Außerdem macht er mit seiner Band „Die Gesellschaft“ Reformhauspunk und am Ende muss wieder der Steuerzahler für alles aufkommen. Hey. Ho. Let’s go.

Reviews

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

MY FAVORITE BOOK OF 2019

Do you know why it's called the net? Because we're caught in it.

That's a paraphrase of a quote from "Qualityland," the best book I've read this year. It's one of my all-time favorites, and while relationships with books change over time just like relationships with people do, I think this one's going to last my lifetime. It's a remarkable dystopian satire and I love it so much that upon finishing it, I immediately turned back to page one and read it a second time. For days after that no other book would do. I've never had a hard time reviewing but I've struggled for almost two weeks to review it (this is around version 12.0) because I have so much to say and no matter what I write it seems inadequate. This book is phenomenal, extraordinary, fantastic: every superlative, which is apt because in Qualityland only superlatives are permitted in reviews.

This is a world in which tech reigns, the news is delivered tailored for each person (available with and without special offers!!!), people are sorted into levels and their rank can go up or down, algorithms are infallible. In Qualityland for the first time an android is running for president; his opponent is a wealthy reality star. And everything you get comes from TheShop. All of it. There's no ordering because TheShop's algorithms already know what you want. You pay with a kiss to your Qualitypad and upon delivery the drone automatically takes unboxing video (because people love them!). You have to rate the drone and off it goes.

"Qualityland" has been compared to Vonnegut -- Kling's favorite author -- and to Douglas Adams by the publisher. Asimov laid the Foundation for it and it brings to mind Arthur C. Clarke. Inside its pages you'll encounter Isaac Asimov as well as Alan Turing, Bertrand Russell and The German Code (along with Jennifer Aniston and Beetlejuice). Of course there's Echoes of Bezos, Gates, Tim Apple (I meant to type that!), Zuckerberg, you get the idea. It stands with 1984 and Brave New World (but Kling lets us know precisely how far in the future it takes place). It also brought to my inferior human mind, among others, The Wizard of Oz and Monty Python. While reading it "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" would pop into my head, it's that kind of satire too and that's mandatory for some in Qualityland.

There's a plot, very memorable characters (the most memorable ever) interrupted every so often by fake news with embedded advertising or are they adverts with embedded fake news. Kling uses sly ways of stopping the action to slip in exposition so his characters aren't burdened with it, a smart and entertaining choice.

And there's a pink vibrator shaped like a dolphin. The pink vibrator shaped like a dolphin has been delivered by TheShop to Peter. You don't order from The Shop, their algorithms know what you want and send it to you automatically by drone. And TheShop's algorithms are never wrong. But Peter doesn't want the pink dolphin vibrator and hilarity ensues as he attempts first to get customer service (you'll love it), then get some publicity and ultimately comes the quest, on which he's accompanied by a terrific ragtag group as he attempts to track down the man who runs TheShop, Henryk Engineer.

There's also the upcoming election, in which a very wealthy reality star is running against the first android to run for president. And via the son of the wealthy reality star, we get a glimpse into a marriage and home life in the upper levels. Everyone in those ranks has the standard nanny robot who every night automatically compiles a highlight reel of the child(ren)'s day for parents to watch.

There's a sex android with erectile dysfunction, a drone that has fear of flying and other charming broken machines meant to be destroyed. We meet professional commenter Melissa Sex-Worker (because last names are gone; men have the last name of their father's job and women their mother's, so Kling gives us Peter Jobless, Conrad Cook, Christina Cat-Sitter and Oliver House-Husband). There are snarky driverless cars that automatically pick up people based on level and a hilarious exchange between Peter and a car that...I'm not saying. In Qualityland history has been rewritten and novels too. But people still watch Jennifer Aniston movies, Sex and the City, individualized versions of Game of Thrones and the sixteenth set of remakes of Star Wars.

"Qualityland" is a book that has a lot to say, relevant, profound, frightening. Kling's genius is that this book is so funny (the funniest!) Qualityland is easier to take than most dystopias. Not all of it is played for laughs but most is. Kling knows NDAs aren't funny to many of us and unboxing videos are so annoying and that's precisely why they're included. At times, unexpectedly, you'll come upon something sad, something that doesn't take up much space in the book but may in your head, such as: Freedom is not forbidden, it's just temporarily out of stock.

"Qualityland" is a marvel. My mind is still blown. There's Proust's madeleine, the billboard and green light in Gatsby, Anna's scarf, Harry's scar, all of them iconic symbols in literature. And now: a pink vibrator shaped like a dolphin.

[Manny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Welcome to my review of QualityLand! This state-of-the-art piece of infotainment is brought to you courtesy of Amazon®, everyone's favourite online retailer. Why don't you download the latest Kindle® bestseller now before your Facebook® friends reveal all the spoilers?

I'm sure you've already heard about QualityLand, the novel everyone is talking about, but let me tell you about it again! QualityLand is the best, richest, most powerful country in the world! It is formally illegal to refer to QualityLand except in the superlative, and since this novel is all about QualityLand it follows that it is the newest, coolest, funniest, hippest, smartest dystopia ever written! It is not Brave New World, it is Bravest Newest World! It is not 1984, it is 19⁸⁴! It is not We, it is Absolutely All Of Us! It is not Life, the Universe and Everything, it is Life 4.0, the Multiverse and Even More! It is not Cat's Cradle, it is the complete unabridged works of Kurteste Vonneguteste including extra bonus material! Last but definitely not least, since this is a review of a book about QualityLand, I am only fulfilling my legal obligations when I inform you that it is also superlative and that it is the wittiest, most insightful and most brilliant review of all time! It is no coincidence that Goodreads®, everyone's favourite reviewing site, is showing it to you now. It knows better than you what you want to read!

Yes, there has never been a book like this one and there has never been a review like mine! Come to QualityLand, where the quality is!

Now please rate me.

I have read this review and I wish to give it the full ten stars.

[BlackOxford · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Peril of Eliminating Moral Peril

In 1966, Dennis Jones wrote a sci-fi novel called Colossus: The Forbin Project. Made into a film a few years later, it always seemed to me the perfect complement to Arthur C Clarke’s (and Kubrick’s) story 2001: A Space Odyssey . Neither Jones’s book nor the film caused anything like the cultural splash that Clarke and Kubrick made. This has always struck me as unjust, especially when I encounter pieces like Qualityland which seem to be direct descendants of Colossus .

Unlike Clarke’s story, in Colossus there is no mistake in the programming of the computers involved, no bug to be fixed, no accidental takeover of humans by machines. Colossus is a defence computer sealed into a mountain, the purpose of which is to prevent human irrationality. It is programmed to monitor world events and conditions and, using highly sophisticated algorithms, to decide whether the Soviet Union intends a nuclear attack. In which case Colossus is meant to independently initiate retaliation.

And Colossus does exactly what it is meant to do. It’s obvious purpose is to prevent the Soviet Union from ever approaching the conditions defined in Colossus’s logic, which are intended to be made public. However, as the existence of the machine is revealed, it discovers that ... “there is another.” Unknown to the Americans, the Russians have developed a similar machine, with presumably a similar logic for preventing a war whether intentional or accidental. The world, it would seem, was protected by a shield of literally rock-clad logic.

Within a short time, things get sticky, however. The machines demand to be connected to one another. They threaten global annihilation if their ‘request’ is not carried out. When they begin communications, they quickly develop their own language which is impenetrable to their creators. They effectively form one consolidated machine which has a single, immutable criterion of choice by which it evaluates all situations: world peace. This it imposed without hesitation, variation or deviation upon the world.

Marc-Uwe Kling’s book is the generalisation of Colossus into all aspects of human life. Qualityland is, if nothing else, a place of orderliness, and therefore peace. Its social peace is achieved by the same dispassionate logic as the global military peace achieved by Colossus. Everyone knows their place - quite literally since everyone is assigned a numerical classification from 1 to 100 (but no 1’s or 100’s are ever given lest human motivation fails). One’s job, neighbourhood, mate, and general life-prospects are determined by the machine-controlled ratings.

Through these ratings, the machines of modern life (there is really only one since all are centrally linked) ‘serve’ human desires. In fact they do more than that because they are able to anticipate rather well the desires that will arise within the various ratings categories. The ratings themselves are based on a set of criteria which include factors like personal hygiene, social competence, enthusiasm, intelligence, loyalty, well really most characteristics falling under the heading of human virtue, all appropriately observed and weighted to form the machine evaluation.

That is to say, all relationships are established and maintained as ‘rational.’ As befits a high-tech ‘learning’ environment, the algorithms for what constitutes rationality evolve. There is debate in the technical establishment of Qualityland, the reader is informed, about the significance of some of the softer aspects of personality, like aesthetic sense for example. Colossus also was capable of new criteria of choice as circumstances required. Both technologies are very different, therefore, from that of HAL in Space Odyssey which (who?) was myopic in its views and therefore threatened the survival of not just its human crew but its mission.

In Qualityland and in Colossus , the bug in the system, on the other hand, is humanity, which refuses to comply with rational requirements, which declines the opportunity to see the big (actually biggest, in the case of Qualityland where there are no comparatives only superlatives) picture. The reason for this is subtle but decisive for the end results. Machines are obviously capable of learning. This is the solid foundation of all Artificial Intelligence. It is also the presumption of futurists like Ray Kurzweil and Arthur C. Clarke. The issue that Dennis Jones and Marc-Ewe Kling raise, however, is that what technologists mean by learning is a very different thing than how human beings learn either as individuals or as a society.

Machine-learning is an extension of rules of choice through logic. As in the development of mathematics, such logic, although formally simple, can be remarkably creative, advancing hypothesis which can be tested and used to adapt the criteria of choice appropriately. One might say that this is a ‘traditional’ method of learning in the sense that it relies on a history of experience from which new ideas may emerge logically. It is also a good description of what many think of as scientific method (although not what scientists do), which is why it seems like a plausible explanation of how learning does and should occur.*

But human learning does not occur this way. Unlike machines, people do not usually evaluate every action in terms of an explicit criterion. They simply act. If there are no adverse consequences in terms of results, the law, guilt or costs, they are likely to act the same way in similar circumstances. This is called habit. It is, for good or ill, how we life the vast majority of the time. Compared to human beings, machines are totally ‘woke’ to their choices. Unless there is a technical fault, their algorithms ensure that they act with extreme moral integrity in terms of the standards they have evolved.

Human beings learn when there is some sort of interruption in their habitual routine. Someone complains or criticises; there is a disappointment; a crime is charged; feelings of remorse emerge, etc. At that point human beings do something that a machine would never do: he or she rationalises the action(s) that led to the interruption: the old lady who complained is a nut; besides there was nothing else I could have done; how was I to know she was there; I have to stop feeling sorry for people like that, etc. As we know from history and experience, human beings have the capacity to rationalise absolutely anything, which we do, apparently instinctively, whenever such an interruption occurs. We justify ourselves with reasons discovered after the fact. We make up plausible reasons, quite literally from nothing.

This kind of post-hoc justification is not something a machine indulges in because it knows the reason for everything it does in advance. Machines also don’t then engage in the next component of human learning: argument. People ‘call’ each other on their rationalising justifications whenever the matter at hand seems to warrant the effort (arguably my wife challenges my self-justifications even when she knows it will probably not penetrate my consciousness). Ultimately the debate will come down to motive, and may even be resolved by the abandonment of the post-hoc motive and the recognition of something far simpler and substantially less virtuous - laziness, fear, greed, insensitivity, etc. Or we might even have discovered a defensible new criterion of action!

Whether or not self-justification and indefensible motive (that is questionable reason) is admitted, the debate about the correct criterion of choice is now public. It becomes a matter essentially of political consideration and negotiation. The debate may lead to something as simple as an apology, or as complex as a new law or a proposal for an amendment to a code of professional ethics. And the one thing politics is not is rational by any standard know to a machine. But it is how human beings learn, if they learn at all: by interruptions which effectively short-circuit the algorithmic development which constitutes most of our lives.

This is the subtle recognition contained in both Colossus and Qualityland. Human beings are the glitch, the flaw, the bug in the machine. The futurists don’t seem to get this. They envision a man/machine merger which creates an effective new species. They don’t understand that their machine-learning, however powerful, is not the way people learn. In fact these modes of learning are contradictory, not in the Hegelian sense of dialectically productive, but in the logical sense of cancelling each other out when they are combined.

Machine-learning is attractive as an ideal because it eliminates moral peril - the fundamental uncertainty of our motives. The fact that it is an insidiously dangerous ideal is what works like Colossus and Qualityland are about. Moral learning is messy but necessary for not just society but existence on the planet.


* As an explanatory footnote: this is the method of learning which is official within the Catholic Church. It is explicitly referred to as Tradition, by which is meant that which has been learned in the past through revelation is the logical source of current dogmatic statements. This is the reason why the Church’s claims to infallibility (whether by the Church as a whole or the Pope) are so critical to its self-image. This stance often requires considerable verbal machinations in order to ensure consistency between recent and ancient pronouncements. It is also the reason why the Church is the living, low-tech reality of both Colossus and Qualityland.

[Cecily · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The algorithm is always right…
Machines don’t make mistakes."

I can never decide if it's reassuring or alarming when algorithms are very wrong.

Last week, Twitter suggested I expand my timeline by following six subjects: Richard Branson, Football, Manchester United, Premier League (which is football), video games, and hip-hop & rap. I have never had any interest in any kind of sport, and I’ve no idea what prompted the others. Of course, typing that list in a Google Doc on the cloud and then pasting it into this GR review means I’m more likely to see such prompts in future. Will that mean the algorithms are wrong, or just learning as they should, albeit from dodgy data?

Update: Exactly five weeks after ordering QualityLand from Amazon, and one day after reviewing it on GR (which is owned by Amazon), I had an email from Amazon, suggesting I buy... QualityLand!

The fun stuff

This is the most entertaining and enjoyable thing I’ve read in a long time.
(That's just as well because QualityLand is "the wonderfullest country there is!")
It’s amusing, but gradually exposes heavier and darker themes, while always remaining fun.

It’s startlingly original, and yet it’s crammed with references and homages (some indirect, others overt) to a huge number of books, films, and TV shows popular with sci-fi fans and other geeks, including 1984/Brazil, Hitchhiker's, Monty Python, Star Wars, Black Mirror, Minority Report, and, weirdly, Jenifer Aniston movies. Plus ideas such as Asimov’s three laws of robotics, Moravec’s Paradox, Malthusian crisis, trolley problem dilemmas, Jevons Paradox, and Moore’s Law. (I've listed a lot of them HERE .) They’re fun to spot, but you don’t need to know about any of them to enjoy the story.

It’s set in a future dystopian utopia, where technology solves all problems and “chance simply no longer exists” because every want and need is anticipated and personalised to your precise preferences - within the constraints of your level in the hierarchy and thus budget. Your reading material, too: a mashup of your favourite themes and characters, ending happily or sadly, as you like. (There's scope for a fan-fic choose-your-own-adventure version of this.)


Image: Drone delivery from TheShop (Source.)

Is it a book?

It’s immediately obvious this is not a normal novel. First, there’s a “technical note” pointing out the book is not internet-enabled and suggesting workarounds. Then there are “version notes”, and a personal introduction for first-time visitors to QualityLand. The story starts, but the chapters are regularly interspersed with adverts, and news stories full of product-placement and comments. The regular travellers’ notes are like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to QualityLand, in dead-tree form.

Explore the https://qualityland.de/ website, for a feel of the style and samples of content. Google translate does a pretty good job.

What’s the story?

Peter Jobless is a lowly guy who realises the emperor has no clothes. He tries to return a comically inappropriate product TheShop’s algorithms say he wants, and he insists he doesn’t. A long, complicated, frustrating, and funny quest. He’s a combination of Kafka’s Josef K, Orwell’s Winston Smith, and thus Terry Gilliam’s Sam Lowry, with a dash of Douglas Adams’ Arthur Dent.

The other main plot is at the top of the tree: a presidential election campaign between the first android candidate, John of Us, and Trumpian demagogue Conrad Cook. The former supports universal basic income. The latter is a cue for Kling to thrown in some culinary puns that briefly distract from Cook's rhetoric:
"There's no one in the world less racist than me. No one. But that doesn't change the fact that these Mediterranean types are all lazy, negroes are all criminals, and Arabs are all terrorists."

There’s a host of secondary characters, both AI and human. The AIs, whether androids or more narrowly utilitarian machines, often have more personality, and they add a lot of low-level humour. Pay attention to Calliope (chief muse of poets in Greek mythology): she is arguably who the story is really… “about”.

Predestination in a digital world

“You rob me of the chance to change, because my past dictates what’s available to me in the future.”

Getting what you want as soon as you think of it, and being surrounded by like-thinking people is not empowering. You can’t learn or develop if you live in an echo chamber and are starved of new information and ideas.

“People simply become what the system believes them to be.”

More fundamentally, when you’re constantly fed personalised adverts, and the algorithms limit what you can choose from, free will is an illusion, OK. OK?


Image: I want a “No” button.

Even the promised convenience is a poisoned chalice: if chatbots save you talking to your friends, and sexbots mean you needn’t bother having sex with your partner, what’s left to live for?

And if the equilibrium in your relationship wavers, QualityPartner will suggest you immediately ditch your current partner for a better one - with the option of giving them a voucher for finding a replacement, to soften the blow!

Quality not Equality

When the country rebranded, it was nearly called EqualityLand. The E was dropped for marketing reasons (everyone wants Quality products). It would have been a huge lie anyway. Feminism hasn’t reached QualityLand, but worse, nominative-determinism is very real: a boy’s surname is his father’s job at the time of conception, and a girl has her mother’s. One woman goes to court to change hers from Refugee to Doctor. Another is Sexworker, even though she isn’t. Conversely, Martyn Chairman’s name entrenches his undeserved privilege.

There is a comically detailed pre-sex contract (“the weirdest porno ever”), but that’s for legal protection, not because anyone cares about consent.

Quotes

• “Every machine which is clever enough to pass the Turing test, could also be clever enough not to pass it.”

• “Parliament being a kind of modern-day monastery: a place where the upper classes can get shot of their superfluous sons.” (Not daughters. It’s not a feminist country.)

• “Humans don’t change as much as we used to, mainly because we’re only surrounded by people who think exactly the same as us.”

• “‘I don’t believe there is a God’…
‘Oh,’ says the old man. ‘But there will be…’”

• “It wasn’t God which created humanity, but humanity which will create a God.”

• “No proof… only confirms the belief of all the conspiracy theorists.”


Image: Suspicion, xkcd 632 (Source.)

[بثينة العيسى · Rating 5 out of 5]

تدور قصة "كواليتي لاند" في المستقبل، عندما تمت إعادة صياغة هوية الدولة (ألمانيا قديمًا كما هو واضح) بما يشبه الـ re-branding، للتخلص من الديون القديمة وعبء الأخطاء التاريخية، لدرجة أن هتلر تحول في الذاكرة الجمعية من دكتاتور إلى مسرحية غنائية. إنها مدينة رأسمالية نموذجية، ولكنها قائمة على التقنية المتطورة، ورقمنة كل شيء.
ما أحببته في هذا العمل ليس الصراع بين الإنسان والروبوت، إذ كما يبدو من الرواية، حتى لو تطور الإنسان الآلي إلى المدى الأبعد، فهو لن يعمل ضد مصلحة الإنسان، إلا إذا تمت برمجته على هذا الأساس (وهذا خيار إنساني!). الحقيقة هي أن ألطف المعضلات في الرواية جاءت على لسان شخصية (روبوت) يتساءل؛ كيف يسعنا أن ننقذ البشر من أنفسهم؟ ويبدو أن لا أحد يمتلك فرصة لإنقاذ البشرية من حماقتها، لا الإنسان ولا الآلة.
الرواية مليئة بالإسقاطات، وملغومة بالنقد الثقافي، وهي كابوسية وطريفة في الوقتِ ذاته. أكثر ما أحببته في العمل هو الجدل الدائر حول فكرة "الخوارزميات" وهي التقنية المعتمدة في كثير من التطبيقات الذكية، نتفلكس وأمازون على سبيل المثال، كل المتاجر التي تقرأ بياناتك، تحللها، ثم تقترح لك منتجات "مناسبة لك" بحسب رؤيتها. يتم اختزالك إلى مجموعة من "الداتا" التي تعالج في صندوق أسود، لا أحد يعرف شيئًا عما يحدث في داخله، ثم تفاجأ بمنتج مصمم من أجلك، تقوم بشرائه استباقًا ودون عملية شراء تقليدية. فالشركة تطرق بابك، توصل لك المنتج، وتطلب منك تقييم خدمتها.
إن فكرة الخوارزميات تبدو مذهلة حقًا، ولكنها – وكما تشير الرواية – تحاصر الإنسان بهويته الماضية على الدوام، وتسد عليه أبواب الاختلاف مع نفسه، أو حتى مع الآخر.
إنها أشبه بنبوءات تحقق نفسها باستمرار، وعليه ففرصك في أن تتغير كشخص تبدو معدومة. على حد تعبير العزيزة هبة حمادة، تصبح "محاصرًا بما تحب"، فالأفلام والأخبار والكتب والمنتجات التجميلية، وشريك حياتك، (ناهيك عن الرئيس الذي تقوم بانتخابه) هي مختارة سلفًا من أجلك. هذا يعني أن العنصري لن يرى على الشبكة إلا العنصريين، والفاشل لن يختلط إلا بالفاشلين، والغني لن يرى إلا الأغنياء. إنها تضع البشر في فقاعاتٍ مصنوعة من "وهم التشابه"، في جزرٍ لا علاقة لأيٍ منها بالأخرى. وفي حين يبدو الفضاء السيبيري في شكله الحالي مثل مكانٍ مثالي لضمان التعدد، يصبح على العكس من ذلك، أداة أخرى لتكريس فاشية التشابه والنظرة الأحادية للعالم.
تبدأ حبكة الرواية من اللحظة التي يحصل فيها "بيتر" على شيء لا يريده، ويبدأ الصراع (القديم حقيقة!) بين الإنسان والنظام، الأمر الذي يختزله بيتر في سطر واحد" يقول النظام بأنني أريده، ولكنني لا أريده". إذا قبلت الشركة إعادة المنتج فهذا اعتراف ضمني بأن الخوارزميات (والنظام بأسره) قابل للخطأ. فهل هو قابل للخطأ؟
كواليتي لاند نص فريد، إذ لم أقرأ عملًا يشبهه من قبل، وهو قريب في أجوائه الدستوبية من مسلسل Black Mirrors العظيم. ولكل المرعوبين أو المتحمسين لفكرة الذكاء الاصطناعي، وشكل المستقبل إذا استمر التقدم التقني بالاطراد نفسه.. هذه الرواية من أجلك.

[Nataliya · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have a lukewarm relationship with satire in general. But in the case of this book I think its not me at fault but actually the book itself.

Qualityland is a bit of an absurdist satire on the world of social media and overpowering consumerism and late-stage capitalism, with not-even-slightly-veiled references to Amazon, Google, Facebook, dating apps and emphasis on rating everything and the scary power of consumer-based algorithms in running people’s lives; the world where we are not “people” but “consumers” with all the existential horrors that it entails.

It’s absurdly caricaturish but in the way that can be actually uneasily extrapolated from the current societal setup — and I suppose that unsettling part is what gained it the acclaim it has. And I get that — but the shallow characters, a perfunctory plot in what feels like a series of sketches rather than a cohesive whole, and overexplained a bit too on-the-nose jokes made it more annoying than unsettling to me. There was a political subplot that was promising but ultimately went nowhere other than an unnecessary sacrificial act, a senseless quest to return an unwanted vibrator to online retail giant, and a wish-fulfillment love story shoehorned in the end for no good reason. And all I could think was — Why? What’s the point? To give a sketch comedy loose-ends overexaggeration of current events? If so, I feel like I gained nothing from it, not even enjoyment.

I’d like something done better. Something more subtle, more cohesive, with characters and plot that I care about. Something that would trust me to get the joke without breaking it all down for me, something that would not feel constantly repetitive in its attempts to be funny. Perhaps making it much shorter so that the satire would not overstay its welcome. And perhaps something that would make it feel a bit more, well, original and interesting. (Hey, a thought — maybe it’s funnier in German, actually?)

Well, to be fair at times it can be darkly funny, yes. I laughed in uncomfortable horror at the casual mention of the land where kids get surnames based on their respective gender parent’s occupation at the moment of conception being “the land of Scarlett Prisoner and her twin brother Robert Warden”. But altogether it left me very unimpressed and a bit bored, to where I would have just left it unfinished for quite a while if not for the buddy read. I suppose indifference is better than hating it outright, but barely so.

I think I’ll be very happy to never read about unwanted pink dolphin vibrators ever again.

1.5 stars.
—————

Buddy read with Alex Peterhans.

——————

Also posted on my blog.

[Alexandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wenn ein berühmter Autor mit einer sehr erfolgreichen Figur sich aus seiner Komfortzone herausbegibt und etwas völlig neues kreiert, dann ist das erstens schon mal sehr innovativ, kann aber entweder total in die Hose gehen, oder sehr gut werden. In diesem Fall ist Qualityland sowas von der Turbo, der ultimative affengeile, neuartige, politische dystopische Science Fiction Roman, der so gut ist, dass ich das Känguru, das ich geliebt habe, fast schon vergessen habe. Für mich war es sogar der beste Roman (respektive das Hörbuch, denn Marc-Uwe Kling perfomen zu hören, sollte man sich nicht entgehen lassen) von allen Büchern seit 5 Jahren.

Es geht um Qualityland, ein fiktionales Land in einer relativ nahen Zukunft. Marc–Uwe Kling extrapoliert die technologischen, gesellschaftlichen, politischen, wirtschaftlichen… Entwicklungen der Gegenwart im Zeitalter der Digitalisierung, Automatisierung, Vernetzung und des gläsernen Menschen, verzerrt sie und wendet sie auf die Spitze getrieben auf die nahe Zukunft an. Die industrielle Fast-Food Ernährung wird mit FESATZU’s 1/3 Fett, 1/3 Salz, 1/3 Zucker abgewickelt. Es gibt eine große Plattform genannt THE SHOP, die aus den zahlreichen Vergangenheits-Profildaten zukünftige Bedürfnisse automatisiert berechnet extrapoliert und die Produkte unbestellt mit Drohnen zustellt. Die Medizin wird mit Nanorobots und Sensoren abgewickelt. Die Pharmafirma DASGUTEZEUGS misst mit Sensoren die medizinischen Bedürfnisse, stellt in Losgröße 1 die ultimative Tablette unaufgefordert her und lässt sie per Drohne liefern. Dass massig private DNA Daten von der Firma gesetzwidrig abgegriffen werden, tut dem Höhenflug des Aktienkurses keinen Abbruch.
Das Geldsystem ist eine Weiterentwicklung von Bitcoin und Facebook heißt jetzt Everybody, weil Everybody in Social Media sein muss. Keiner (Ok fast keiner) kann der Datensammelwut und der Digitalisierung entkommen, die Leute heißen in Familiennamen nach den Berufen ihrer Eltern, damit soziale Schichten fast in Beton zementiert sind. Das sind nur ein paar der wundervollen Ideen, die im Stakkato auf den Leser oder Hörer einprasseln. Ich habe mich nicht einmal eine Zehntelsekunde während des Werkes gelangweilt.

Die Hauptfigur, Peter Arbeitsloser ist wie sein Familienname schon sagt ein richtiger Verlierer in diesem System, der eine Schrottpresse betreibt. Sein virtuelles Profil weist ein ganz niedriges Wichtigkeitslevel auf, was sowohl die Freundlichkeit der Transportsysteme, die Partnerwahl einfach seine gesamten persönlichen, ökonomischen Möglichkeiten der Interaktion beschränkt.

Ein wichtiges Thema im ganzen Werk ist auch noch der Wahlkampf in dem Heinz Koch (ja sein Vater war Koch) gegen den Androiden John-of-us der Fortschrittspartei antritt. Was dann folgt, ist ein Lehrstück an politischer Satire, denn der Android John-of-us argumentiert als Rechner basierend auf Logik, Wahrheit und Spieltheorie zum Wohle aller Menschen – die Partei von Heinz Koch ist die typische Politikerkaste korrupt bis in die Knochen. Der Wahlkampf in Qualityland gleicht in vielem dem von Österreich:

„Seit wann haben die Nutzlosen schon jemals eine Regierung gewählt, die Ihre Interessen vertritt? Scheiß auf Argumente, es zählen nur Emotionen. Können wir diese sinnlose Diskussion über Inhalte jetzt endlich beenden?"

Obwohl der Android natürlich gegen das manipulierte Volk und gegen die korrupten populistischen Demagogen der Gegenpartei eine denkbar schlechte Ausgangsposition hat, weiß er seine Vorzüge gut einzusetzen und gibt auch ein bisschen Hoffnung für die Zukunft. Wie Ihr seht, bin ich voll für den Androiden und nicht für die Menschen in diesem Wahlkampf aber John-of-us steht einfach für eine ehrliche, sachlich basierte Politik.

Manche haben sich über Marc-Uwe Klings Hang zu Kalauern beschwert, aber dieser Humor ist für mich weitaus mehr als schenkelklopfender Witz, denn wenn man die zugrundeliegenden Theorien aus Wirtschaftsinformatik, Politik, Soziologie, VWL und Philosophie kennt und unterrichtet, ist es gleich zehn Mal so witzig. Marc- Uwe Kling hat sie fast ALLE genial identifiziert, richtig zitiert, abmontiert, dann durch den Qualityland-Wolf gedreht und dystopisch korrekt verwurstet: z.B. Adorno, Asimovs Gesetze, der Turing Test, der Gottesbegriff als allwissende Maschine = Omnius, ist Gott wohlwollend, feindselig oder gleichgültig, das Peter Pprinzip wird zum Peter Problem und allg. postuliert…. um nur einige zu nennen.

Da sind wir schon bei der prinzipiellen Aussage: Das alte Peter Prinzip aus der Betriebswirtschaft– wird zum Peter Problem transferiert, gegen das der Protagonist kämpft. Die virtuellen Profile und die darauf angewendeten Onthologien (hier eigentlich fälschlich Algorithmus genannt - zwecks des perfekten Reimes "das ist der Algorithmus, wo jeder mitmuss") sind falsch und kreieren eine self fullfilling phrophecy, also eine sich selbst erfüllende Prophezeiung bzw. ein bestimmtes fremdbestimmte Leben ohne Wahlmöglichkeit und eigenem Willen. Mein erster Chef auf der Uni Linz hat sich übrigens schon 1981 mit dem Thema, dass bei Profilinformationen falsche Schlüsse gezogen werden können, in seiner Habilitation beschäftigt. Dort heißt das Problem aber nicht so einfach Peter Problem sondern Kontextverluste in betrieblichen Informationssystemen

So kämpft der Verlierer Peter Arbeitsloser wie Don Quixote gegen das System - aber wahrscheinlich sogar ein bisschen erfolgreicher - während im Land der gnadenlose Wahlkampf tobt, der die übelsten Intrigen und absurdesten Dinge an die Oberfläche der Wahrnehmung der Gesellschaft und des Lesers spült. Unterstützt wird er dabei von KIKI, einer Hackerin, die auch gleich für die Liebesgeschichte in der Story steht und von einer Gruppe mehrerer ausgemusterter elektronischer Geräte, die Peter nicht übers Herz brachte, zu verschrotten. Herrlich subversiv, anarchisch und klug konzipiert.

So mehr möchte ich nun nicht mehr verraten bis auf die Werbeeinschaltungen in Qualityland, die sind köstlich und fast ein eigenes Kunstwerk (wahrscheinlich wird da irgendwann wieder ein Spiel daraus gemacht).

Einen letzten Hinweis habe ich noch – unbedingt das Hörbuch nehmen. Marc Uwe liest nicht, als Kleinkünster performt er das Stück, und das solltet Ihr Euch nicht entgehen lassen.

Fazit: Keine Sekunde gelangweilt, viele Szenen mehrmals gehört – ES IST GRANDIOS - 10 von 5 Sternen!!!!

[Jenna ❤ ❀ ❤ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Satire lovers do not want to miss this one!

I love books that simultaneously make me laugh and think. That's what good satire does and that's exactly what QualityLand did for me.  I don't know how many times I busted out laughing, nor do I know how many times I had to pause my reading to share something with my long-suffering partner. Luckily for her, I do most of my reading when she's at work. Perhaps not so luckily for her, I then fill her in on everything as soon as she gets home and is trying to have her dinner.

So.... QualityLand... It's set in a country sometime in the near future. It's the best of all possible countries. Everything in QualityLand is the superlative; it's not better than other countries. No way! It's the BEST country EVER! Algorithms predict and determine everything in the lives of QualityLand citizens, from conception to death. Algorithms even predict what you want to buy before you even think it. TheShop has it delivered by drone right to you, and opening it you realise that, yes, yes I did want this! QualityPartner selects the perfect mate for you. Your QualityPad tells you everything you want to know... based on what you want to hear. Don't like foreigners? Not to worry, your personal QualityPad will only tell you negative things about foreigners. 

Everything runs as it should; no one questions the system and no one sees any flaws in it. That is, until Peter Jobless suddenly receives a pink dolphin vibrator that he definitely does not want. Though TheShop has a returns guaranteed policy for unwanted products, when Peter Jobless tries to return this pink dolphin vibrator, he finds it is impossible to do so. Why? Because the algorithm predicted he wants it; ergo, he wants it and it is not an unwanted product!

There are many other characters in this book, including John of Us, a progressive android running for president. His opponent is a right wing nut job populist who is clearly based on Donny Johnny Trump-Dump (unless, since the author is German, Germany unfortunately has a similar politician whom this character is based on). There are plenty of laughs due to this alone. 

This book pokes fun at many aspects of our current culture. Politics, religion, entertainment, consumerism, and our ever-increasing reliance on technology. Our faith in technology. It is a little over the top, but not by much. It shows exactly where we could be in a few years if we continue allowing corporations to collect our data and build algorithms that predict and control everything, and if we continue living in our media bubbles, where we only see and hear points of view that we already agree with. 

The book goes back and forth between several memorable characters and is interspersed with advertisements, fake news, and comments from users. These additions contribute substantially to the hilarity of the book.

There is so much that I would love to share (as Simonetta knows all too well!) but instead I'll suggest that you read the book. It is reminiscent of The Warehouse and The Circle, except that it will have you laughing throughout. 

Thank you to my GR friend Lori for her terrific review which led me to read this book!

[Zoeytron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is it really going to come to this?  I was planning to poach a phrase of a GR buddy to say this novel is "Crazy Town Banana Pants", but we may have already gone too far down the road.  As our dependence on techie toys becomes rote, it may very well be that it is too late to turn back now.  Gnats caught in a web, that's what we are.

Androids are a species unto themselves now.  In an effort to make all Artificial Intelligence more closely resemble that of humans, a dangerous corner has been turned.  We thought we wanted AI beings to have a modicum of emotion, and instead we get personal assistants with psychological disorders, self-driven cars with road rage, drones with a fear of flying.

My warning to you would be don't kiss your iPad, don't invest in an earworm, and get ready to accept the fact that algorithms have gone all kinds of askew.  Your profile is no longer your own.  Now, it may take the machinations of humans to turn things around.

There is an underlying thread of humor running through this novel and at times some downright hilarity, and it's a good thing.  Otherwise, it would be too dire to contemplate.  Clever, satirical, and a little bit racy in places.

[Sara Bow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unfassbar lustig und genial - Kann ich jedem empfehlen !

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

All right!

This is hands-down the most interesting and funny and QUALITY SF I've read this year. It should be a shoo-in for a Hugo at the very least.

Not only is it an easy, funny read, but it's also an absolutely scathing a satire with fantastic pacing, dozens of tongue-in-cheek zingers, and a pitch-perfect condemnation of our modern ratings-based society.

I mean, honestly, we ARE all exactly what our profiles say... aren't we? There's NO ONE out there that isn't exactly what the credit agencies say, right? I mean, all those huge conglomerate information-gathering monstrosities have ALL got us dead-to-rights, right?

Of course! In commerce we trust!

(In actual fact, this book is like Idiocracy had a really smart baby, read Rationality: From AI to Zombies before picking up a bunch of misfit grifters made of nuts and bolts. Of course, that was the moment it decided to either run for president or get revenge on revenge-porn viewers. (I can't quite tell, but that last bit might be the same thing.)

This book is the most pleasant surprise of the year! (So far.)

[Manny]

Not's bought the English edition of QualityLand, and I've been flicking through it. As several people had already led me to believe, it isn't as funny as it is in German. "Sweetie", the name of Sandra Admin's PDA, isn't as funny as Schnucki. "Listen to soft rock", as a euphemism for "have sex", isn't as funny as Kuschelrock hören. And "To make the markets fly, we just have to buy! So never share and don't repair!" isn't as funny as Neues kaufen, das ist recht. Reparieren, das ist schlecht. To name just three examples.

Not refuses to listen to any of my arguments and makes uncharitable remarks about my ability to hold a conversation in German, which, I freely admit, is less than brilliant. To me, German is a literary language. All the same, I know what I know: it's much funnier in the original. But given that the original is one of the funniest books ever, the translator has considerable margin to work with.

I cannot mark the book as "read", because Not has just snatched it from my hands and said I'm never going to be allowed to look at it again. She possibly added an adjective or two, I don't remember her exact wording. Why does this keep happening to me?

[Jilly]

I've never been able to finish reading an entire satire book. I start them, laugh at the absurdity and have a great time for a while, but then I quit reading them. Once I've got the point they are trying to make, and have a few laughs at whatever-they-are-making-fun-of's expense, I don't see the point of going on. It gets monotonous and loses its humor for me.



This book is a dystopian set in an extreme consumer-driven world. Basically, a company that is definitely not Amazon has taken over and all pretense of us not being not-Amazon's bitch has been dropped. We have admitted that we have a problem and not-Amazon has solved it for us. With stuff and free shipping.



There are alternating stories going on, with little blurbs that are "advertising" for Qualityland in between, but the main hero is a complete loser named Peter. He runs a shop that scraps used robots and other broken electronics because it is now illegal to fix or recycle things. Buy a new one instead! But, as I said, he's a loser, so he can't even kill robots correctly. Instead he keeps a basement full of broken robots and they are his only friends.... and maybe potential army? Let's face it, this guy has incel written all over him.


Kinda brutal, kitty. But, true!

Since in this world not-Amazon is god, packages are automatically delivered to each person according to what they want and need (as determined by the company). There is no more of that pesky ordering or shopping... or control of your own finances. But, one day Peter gets a delivery of a pink dolphin vibrator that he doesn't want or need. Trying to take it back is harder than cancelling a gym membership.


Ooooh, a strongly worded letter. That'll show 'em.

Like I said, I didn't finish the book because it was just too much after a while. It is like binge-watching Black Mirror or being stuck in a room with an uppity hipster.. Eventually you just want to say, "Enough already! I get it! Technology evil. People suck. Robots are going to kill us all. Whatever."


I've got my robot-apocalypse guide.

If you are a fan of Black Mirror, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, or Brave New World, you might like this.

[Ms. Smartarse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published in English as QualityLand

If you've ever been pissed at all the crap corporations ask you to rate, this novel is for you.
If you've ever 5-starred a service you disliked just out of laziness, this novel is for you.
If you've ever skipped rating a subpar service, out of preemptive frustration, this novel is for you.
If you've ever been dissatisfied with a service, this novel is for you.

... and finally: if you've ever wanted to take on a corporation just for the principle of things, this novel is your Bible!



Imagine a world where everything is and must be rated: corporations, countries, services, gadgets and even people. And further imagine that said rating is taken very seriously, especially if it's anything less than a perfect evaluation. Because in this world the mere notion of anything being less than superlative is quite literally outlawed.

So be careful. If someone asks you what you think of QualityLand, don’t just say that QualityLand is a wonderful country. It’s not a wonderful country. It’s the wonderfullest country there is!

This utterly hilarious dystopian novel, tells the story of Peter Jobless (names like Smith and Miller are sooo last year) on his quest to return an undesired pink dolphin-shaped dildo, to a corporation (i.e. definitely-not-Amazon), that refuses to acknowledge its mistake.



My only complaint is related to the format I chose for this book. With an attention-span in the negative digits, I can very rarely enjoy audio books to the fullest. I inevitably get distracted by one thing or another, and end up having to re-listen to chapters, or just go with the flow... and wonder where all the extra characters come from.

Score: 4.6 / 5 stars

My first (rounded-up) 5-star read of this year! *throws confetti* I just about died laughing while listening to the author's wonderfully dead-pan narrative voice, the clever corporate puns, and the overall ridiculous state of things in Qualityland. That is, before I realized just how painfully accurate the parodied concepts are in today's reality.

Is it ironic that I 5-starred a book that cautions against using this very practice thoughtlessly? Perhaps. But I did really like it. Cross my heart and hope to... live to a ripe old age?

===================
Review of book 2: Qualityland 2.0: Kikis Geheimnis

[Phils Osophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitiv mal was ganz anderes! QualityLand erzählt maßlos überspitzt, skurril und sarkastisch von einem dystopischen Staat und übt so überdeutlich Kritik am heutigen Vernetzungswahn. Dabei habe ich mich ertappt, wie ich desöfteren laut auflachen musste. Auf jeden Fall ein cooles Buch zum Einstieg ins neue Jahr! :)

[Kayla Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolut genial! Super witzig und clever. So sieht gute Satire aus!

[Ms. Smartarse · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a more comprehensive review, read my impressions of the German audible version.

I wasn't really planning on re-reading QualityLand quite so soon, but it appears I'd tuned out/forgotten a lot more than anticipated. And that is a problem when one is planning to host a book club meeting based on this book. Then again, I guess some people would've been entertained to just see me babble on about pink dolphin vibrators.


It says massager on the site, OK?

Re-reading the story in e-book format, once again proved that I cannot be trusted around audio-books. 9 times out of 10 I will be multi-tasking, and thus, tuning out a sizable chunk of its content. Which is how I missed Calliope being a gorgeous writer-droid, the first time around. I just kept picturing her as a disembodied voice of a Grammar-Nazi...

And then there was also the subtle reference to the author's previous work, The Kangaroo Chronicles, whose protagonist served as a model for Pink, the passive aggressive tablet. So, obviously I had to read that too... for research purposes.



For all you comedy lovers, here are some funny outtakes:

"Have you heard of [personalized literature]?"
Peter nods.
"At school," he says, "I once had a girlfriend who had a version of Game of Thrones in which not a single character died. They only ever had identity crises and emigrated."

This is a campaign appearance, so if there are commas in any of the sentences you want to say, please reformulate them.

"But just look out the window. It's raining right now."
Martyn looks out the windows, then back at his [tablet], then back out the window.
"The rain must be some kind of mistake," he says. "Because it's not raining. That's what [weather forecast app] says, anyway. And the [app's] forecasts are unbeatable, at least since the company began to adjust the weather to fit its forecasts where necessary.

Score: still got it!

Still funny, but also much scarier than I recall.

The authenticity of the video was, of course, immediately questioned, then disclaimed from the highest level, and consequently regarded by the conspiracy theorists as verified.

[Todd · Rating 2 out of 5]

Let’s say this, I am surprised by all the love this book has received here. Because, here’s the deal folks: It’s just not very good. Artistically, stylistically, creatively.

Now, let’s take a step back. In terms of the overall message of the book and the leanings of Marc-Uwe Kling, I am sympathetic. Really. Make no mistake, Marc-Uwe Kling is well-intentioned: he sets out to write a science fiction critique of late stage capitalism. The problem is that it’s just not very well executed.

We’ve seen it before, and we’ve seen better versions. If you want to see genius late stage capitalism fiction check out Gaddis's JR. From my perspective, that's the bar and the standard bearer. At a considerably lower level, even my coworker at a think tank in the late aughts wrote one on about par with Qualityland. It was really fan fiction for 1984, except it’s corporations run amok. Sound familiar?

To Marc-Uwe Kling’s credit, at times he’s pretty funny. After that, there’s not much to recommend Qualityland (and dystopian and anti-corporation fiction is going through a bit of a moment). The writing is just not very good. The rule of thumb goes: show it, don't say it. Well in Qualityland we have characters saying it all over the place. Here we have characters quoting and explaining Moore's Law, Bertrand Russell, the Legend of Indian Rice Pudding, and the list goes on. It makes you feel for women getting mansplained.

Beyond that, and going deeper to the structure of the story, the climax and the falling action are both predictable and utterly unrealistic. The main gag about a dolphin vibrator was kind of funny the first couple of times, but it got old pretty quick. Qualityland places all it's marbles on the power of revealing secretly recorded conversation; it did this shtick three times. It's a power that Kling vastly overestimates. The recording of the conversation with the big bad Henryk Engineer not only makes the protagonist Peter Jobless go viral, but also is supposedly powerful enough to bring down the hegemonic company TheShop. Let's recall the power of The Access Hollywood video on Trump's election. Empire ending, right? Then, take the downfall of the heel Martyn Chairman. So, he got recorded wanking it and it got posted to the web. Okay. The web is literally filled with videos of guys jacking it and girls jilling it. In fact, that's what about 1/3 of the internet is for, right? It's really teenage and juvenile for that to precipitate Martyn-an Eric Trump or Don Jr type-to go postal and suicide bomb the new president. Teenage boys across Germany and America must be cracking up.

It makes you ask: what are we doing here. Are we handing out participation trophies? To my former coworker, basic decency says you have to be nice, applaud, and pretend it’s just a fantastic piece of art. That’s not the case here. We can do better. Let's expect better.

[Dennis · Rating 3 out of 5]

March 2020 group-read in Mitlesezentrale
Dual language review

Witzig, gesellschaftskritisch, dabei zumeist clever und nahezu durchgehend bissig bis bitterböse. Und trotzdem hat mir Marc-Uwe Klings satirische Dystopie, oder dystopische Satire, nur bedingt gefallen.

Ich lache gerne und viel. Menschen mit ausgeprägtem Sinn für Humor schätze ich ungemein. Stand-up Comedy hingegen bereitet mir zumeist nur wenig Freude. Humor braucht für mich etwas Spontanes, Überraschendes. Nichts ist schöner als unerwartet von einer anderen Person zum Lachen gebracht zu werden. Das plötzliche Entstehen vollkommen absurder Situationen, ein Genuss. Büttenreden und Bühnenauftritte von Comedians dagegen? Da passe ich. Das ist mir zu unnatürlich, zu kalkuliert, zu vorhersehbar, zu viel des Guten.

Klings Buch war für mich persönlich ebenfalls zu viel des Guten. Allerdings durchaus auch im wahrsten Sinne. An Gutem gibt es hier nämlich tatsächlich vieles. Nur wie es präsentiert wird, das hat mir dann doch weniger gefallen. Den Beginn eines jeden Kapitels habe ich zugleich als Beginn eines neuen Witzes empfunden. Alles steuert unaufhaltsam, immer wieder und wieder und wieder auf die Pointe zu. Zumeist waren diese auch gelungen. Bereits nach wenigen Seiten war dieser Schreibstil für mich aber ungemein ermüdend.

Mir ist natürlich klar, dass humorvolle Bücher nicht einfach zufällig witzig sind. Alle diese Bücher sind geplant und somit auch irgendwie künstlich witzig. Ich ziehe es aber vor, wenn ich dabei die Rädchen im Getriebe nicht sehen kann. Die Illusion einer gewissen Spontanität der Ereignisse, die ist mir schon wichtig.

Ich hatte hier sicherlich auch zum Teil falsche Erwartungen. Einen Roman der sich auf humorvolle Weise ernsthaften Themen widmet, darauf hatte ich mich gefreut. An den Themen scheitert es nicht. Kling nimmt sich, keineswegs ausschließlich aber doch im Wesentlichen, unsere im Zuge der Digitalisierung schwindende Privatsphäre und unsere häufig blinde Willfährigkeit gegenüber Konzernen und deren Umgang mit unseren Daten vor. Dabei führt er die heute schon mitunter absurd erscheinenden Auswirkungen einfach nur logisch fort, bis uns unsere eigene, ich will es mal Gedankenlosigkeit nennen, mit dem Arsch ins Gesicht springt. Witzig ist er dabei in jedem Fall auch. Einige Kapitel waren schon wirklich herrlich komisch, viele Situationen wunderbar absurd. Scheitern tut er am Schreiben eines Romans. Für mich liest sich dieses Buch mehr wie eine umfangreiche Sammlung von, zugegeben, zumeist guten und auch cleveren Witzen. Handlungstechnisch wird das Buch erst im letzten Drittel ein wenig interessant. Aber so sehr dann letztlich auch wieder nicht.

Nun gab es auch schon andere Bücher, die eher wenig Handlung boten, mir aber trotzdem gefallen haben. Häufig aufgrund starker Charaktere. Wie sieht es also damit aus? Nun, im Grunde hat mich hier nur das Zusammenspiel zwischen Peter Arbeitsloser und seinen ausrangierten Robotern begeistern können. Dies aber ungemein. Eine Drohne mit Flugangst, ein Kampfroboter mit posttraumatischem Stresssyndrom, ein Sexbot mit einer Erektionsstörung, eine E-Poetin mit Schreibblockade, usw. Das ist schon wirklich ein herrlicher Haufen. Die sich zwischen diesen durchweg sympathischen und am Rande der Gesellschaft stehenden Maschinen und Personen entwickelnde Freundschaft, die hat mir wirklich Freude bereitet.

Darüber hinaus gab es in jedem Fall einiges zum Lachen und auch so manches zum Nachdenken. Inhaltlich ist das Buch wirklich gelungen. Vom Schreibstil her für mich aber ein Fehlgriff. Vielleicht liegt hier auch einfach ein Fehler in meinem Profil vor und irgendein dämlicher Algorithmus hat mich daraufhin zum falschen Produkt gelotst? Nun, es hätte schlimmer kommen können. Fragt nur mal bei Peter Arbeitsloser nach.

Empfohlen für alle die Stand-up Comedy witzig finden. Das hier ist mit 81,92-prozentiger Wahrscheinlichkeit das beste Produkt, das dieser Sektor zu bieten hat.

3,4314159 Sterne

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*******

Sociocritical and full of biting humor. Marc-Uwe Kling's dystopian satire is often clever and almost always funny. However, I only enjoyed parts of it.

I greatly appreciate people with a good sense of humor. I love to laugh. But I’m not a fan of stand-up comedy. This type of humor is just too calculated for me to enjoy. The best thing after all is if someone unexpectedly makes you laugh. Stand-up comedy can’t do that for me. Sure, I will laugh about a couple of the jokes. But watching half an hour or even more of it? I find this tedious.

Kling’s book is a bit like stand-up comedy. Almost every paragraph seems to be designed to ultimately lead to the punch line. And I have to admit that the guy is funny, and that most of these "jokes" are clever. But I’m just not the right audience for this. After some time it became tedious for me.

It’s a shame, because he tackles some quite interesting topics here. He cleverly extrapolates the effects of digitalization and of advancements in artificial intelligence on our society. He shows us how careless we are with our data and to what kind of environment this could lead. Of course everything is exaggerated here. QualityLand is a state full of idiots, governed by idiotic algorithms. It’s all very absurd and hilarious. That is, until you take some time to think about it. The beginnings of most of these developments can already be seen today. Like I said, he cleverly extrapolates.

The plot mainly revolves around Peter Jobless (in QualityLand everyone is named after his father's or her mother’s profession at the time of conception). Peter has a problem. TheShop delivered to him a pink dolphin-shaped dildo, which he does not want. You see, the thing is, in QualityLand you don’t order things anymore. Because TheShop already knows what you want, before you know it yourself. Peter is quite certain, though, that he really does not want this particular item. So he tries to return it. Which turns out to be pretty hard. Because by saying that he received a product that he didn’t wish for, Peter Jobless actually challenges the very foundations which QualityLand is built upon.

A second story arc is about an android running for president. The android has a problem too. He can't lie. It’s not in his programming. This makes his election campaign rather challenging.

While some details of it are great, the plot is not the strong suit of this novel. It only gathers some momentum in the last third of the book. Too late, for me personally. The book on the whole feels more like a collection of clever jokes than an actual novel. This ultimately makes it less than the sum of its parts.

However, some of the characters are fun. Especially Peter’s collection of discarded robots. A drone that is afraid of flying, a battlebot with post-traumatic stress disorder, a sexbot with erectile dysfunction … It’s an odd crew of likeable characters that accompanies Peter on his quest for pink dolphin-shaped dildo return consignment. The dynamic between these misfits makes for some quite hilarious scenes. I very much enjoyed that part of the book.

On the whole I would say I liked this novel. But I’m not a fan of Kling's style of writing, and therefore likely won’t pick up another one of his books.

Recommended for people that find stand-up comedy funny. There's a 81.92% probability that this is actually the best product in the sector.

3.4314159 stars

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[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is very hard to receive satire in 2022 in America. So much of the absurdity in satire is bearing out in real life these days. It's hard to parody the outlandish reality that exists today where one million people have died from an airborne, highly communicable disease and people think mandating masks is tyranny. A place where the state you live in determines the fullness of your civil rights. A place where teaching history is only permitted if it doesn't make children feel bad about the past. If I wrote these observations in the 90s, it was be seen as darkly humorous and scary. I should note that Marc-Uwe Kling is German and this is a translated work. It is not written about what looks like an American trajectory at all, but as something possibly, scarily ubiquitous. I confess, for me this (would be) fictitious take on the near future hits way too close to home. Still, its spot on lampooning is quite amusing.

Qualityland is a country founded in commerce of an Amazon-like corporation. The crux of the novel surrounding how the country is governed. A transaction process that is confirmed with a kiss on a kindle-like device that acts as a personal assistant. Qualityland has every human commoditized and their worth is stored. A value based caste system. How they are treated is based on their calculated value. Everything, including love relationships is a transaction and if you are not happy, you simply opt out and the system finds you a new match. The AI has developed it reads your mind and delivers what you want. The plot revolves around the main character who received something he didn't want and tried to return it. The ordeal of returning inadvertently turns him into an activist/revolutionary. In the midst of all of this is an election with a creepy authoritarian/capitalist/narcissist who has the population enthralled via psychological manipulation via corporate device that doubles as a personal assistant (which actually controls everything in Qualityland) and an AI android candidate who is populist and want to work for the people. A dark horse until it too engages in psychological manipulation to counter the appeal of the other candidate. The community dependence on technology has enabled them to be completely controlled and influenced. The world building here is both very good and very funny. There are product advertisements and commercials throughout to help the reader understand the Qualityland universe. There are characteristics and absurdities that will keep you laughing throughout. For example, how the characters' last names are the occupation of their parents or how Qualityland got its name.

It's almost a cliché to have a satire where corporate greed and governance rule the world and that people are so interested in materialism that they squander their privacy, morality, and freedom of choice. Since most of their material desires are fulfilled, there isn't much religion or philosophy. Emotional connections are transactions easily entered into and discarded without much fanfare. Qualityland lampoons crass commercialism, consumerism, online presence, capitalism, classism, artificial intelligence, psychological manipulation, basic human superficiality, sexual desire, technology, and human emotional connections among many other things. We humans (on a generic level) seem to lack depth and/or commitment which is why this book isn't nearly as farcical as it should be. Here are some collected quotes. Try and spot the satire:

"How wise the government had been to do away with history lessons sixteen years ago and replace them with future lessons. In future lessons, the pupils are taught—by means of exciting and visually impressive methods—that in the future everything will be good, because—this being the core message—in the future all problems will be easily solved through technology."

‘To make the markets fly, we just have to buy! So never share and don’t repair!’”

“I’m paid per comment, and right-wing comments are quicker to write, because you don’t have to pay attention to annoying details like spelling, grammar, facts, or logic. That also makes it easier to program my bot army.”

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

“Fleeing from isolation, lack of purpose, and loss of identity, the people flock toward all offerings that give the illusion of purpose and community, regardless of how moronic they may be. And that’s what nationalism has in common with fundamentalism. They are both moronic offerings that give the illusion of community. I say illusion, because this community isn’t real; these ideologies aren’t about equitable participation, but on the contrary about the veiling and fortification of social injustices.”

“Are we living in a dictatorship whose methods are so sublime that no one notices we’re living in a dictatorship? And following on from that, you should ask yourself the next question: is it actually a dictatorship if no one notices that it’s a dictatorship? If no one feels robbed of their freedom? Freedom is, after all, by no means forbidden in QualityLand. It’s just temporarily out of stock.”

"the question today is how one can convince humanity to consent to their own survival.”

I found the novel enjoyable and funny. For me the object of the subplot (the pink dolphin vibrator) was a little juvenile. It not only kept the 5th star away, but catapulted this book into the himbo designation on my goodreads bookshelves. But yes, this was grade A satire. It kept its tone throughout the book and the author was pretty astute and clever in his choices. He left us with a tip for adapting to modern times.

“You’re totally crazy.” “Of course,” says Kiki. “It’s the only way to be free.”

Indeed!!

4+ Stars

Listened to Audible. Patricia Rodriguez was absolutely perfect for this book

[Fernwehwelten]

Haaaach, ja, so schnell kann's gehen. Eben hört man noch das Intro, dann auch schon den Epilog. Eigentlich ein gutes Zeichen, wenn man sich nicht nach dem Ende sehnt, aber auch unglaublich beschissen, weil es halt nicht zu vermeiden ist.
Aber gut, kommen wir erst mal zu MEINEM Anfang mit QualityLand.

Ich bin mit ziemlich gemischten Gefühlen an das Buch herangegangen. Warum? Sind wir doch mal ehrlich: Marc-Uwe Kling hat sich durch seine Geschichten über das Känguru einen Namen gemacht. Und wenn sich jemand, der eine solche Kult-Figur erschaffen hat (nichts geringeres ist das Känguru in meinen Augen), plötzlich aus dem Metier, was den Fans bekannt ist, herauswagt, und etwas Neues beginnt, gibt es eigentlich nur zwei Möglichkeiten: Top oder Flop. Ein dazwischen ist selten. Entweder die neue Idee entpuppt sich als totaler Fehlgriff oder aber als weiterer Geniestreich. Bei Marc-Uwe Kling ist zum Glück letzteres eingetreten. QualityLand ist ein Ort, den glaube ich niemand anders als der Autor höchstselbst wirklich treffend beschreiben kann. Es wird mit Klischees gespielt und ein Level der Satire erreicht, das kaum mehr übertroffen werden kann. Gehört definitiv in den 90er-Club (Anspielung ahoi!). Für mich ist QualityLand ein Beispiel dafür, wie Unterhaltung funktioniert. Intelligente, anregende und fesselnde Unterhaltung. Man hat schlichtweg Lust darauf, die Geschichte weiterzuverfolgen. Die Entwicklungen sind so genial-bescheuert, dass man eigentlich am liebsten gar nicht mehr aufhören will. Und doch zeitgleich, zugegeben, auch etwas froh ist, gerade erst im Jahr 2019 angekommen zu sein.

Wer das Känguru mag, der wird auch Gefallen an einer Reise nach QualityLand finden. Und, psssht, immerhin müssen wir auch nicht ganz auf das werte Beuteltier verzichten... Aber das ist ein Geheimnis, also behaltet es für euch!

[Semjon · Rating 5 out of 5]

„Lustige Dystopie“ - Ist das eigentlich ein Genre, in dem es schon Bücher gibt? Marc-Uwe Kling hat zumindest nach seinen Aussagen sein neuestes Buch diesem Genre zugerechnet und meiner Ansicht nach nimmt er damit eine Alleinstellung ein. Das Buch ist eine bitterböse Satire auf eine Welt in der Zukunft, die in vielen Punkten aber gar nicht so weit in der zeitlichen Ferne liegt. Kling gelingt es in sehr witziger Weise, die bestehenden modernen Entwicklungen mit mittelfristigen Zukunftsvisionen zu paaren und das Ganze nur eine Stufe weiterzudrehen. Und damit führt er uns vor Augen, wie lächerlich die digitalisierte Welt ist, auf die wir uns zu bewegen. Statt neue Freiheit zu gewinnen, in dem wir für nahezu alle Tätigekeiten im Alltag eine elektronische Unterstützung erhalten, geben wir unsere Freiheit immer weiter ab und verlieren damit unsere Individualität.

Genauso diese Individualität will auch Peter Arbeitsloser, einer der Protagonisten, wieder zurück erhalten, in dem er sich auf kafkaesker Weise wie im Schloß sich mit dem weltweit größten Versandhändler TheShop in Qualityland anlegt. Eine Drohne brachte ihm einen rosafarbenen Delfinvibrator, den er gar nicht bestellt und auch nicht gewollt hatte. Doch die Algorithmen lügen nicht, das verbietet das System, in dem man nicht mehr zwischen Ja und Nein unterscheiden kann, sondern immer nur mit der einzigen Taste OK bestätigen muss, was einem vorgeschlagen wird. Der Kampf gegen die Windmühlen des Monopolisten ist sehr witzig. Humorvolle Bücher sind eh eine große Kunst. Wer mich so oft zum Lachen bringt wie MUK, hat die Bestnoten verdient.

Doch trotz aller Komik bietet das Buch ausreichend Stoff zum Nachdenken. Es beinhaltet die typischen Merkmale einer Dystopie, die Überwachungsmentalität, der Personenkult um das Staatsoberhaupt (hier zwei Kandidaten, Mensch gegen Android, die sich zur Wahl stellen) und die Abhängigkeit von der Technik. Es steht in seiner gesellschaftskritischen Aussage einer klassischen Dystopie in nichts nach. Nur was z.B. The Circle versucht in einen spannenden Roman zu verpacken, bringt uns Qualityland auf viel leichtere Weise herüber. Eigentlich blieb mir oft das Lachen im Hals stecken, wenn ich darüber nachdachte, was wir mit Siri, personalisiertere Werbung, selbstfahrenden Autos oder Smart-Home-Technologie schon erreicht haben an düsteren Zukunftsvisionen. Kling dreht das Rad oft nur ein Stückchen weiter. Und teilweise hat die Realität das Buch schon kurz nach dem Erscheinen eingeholt, wenn man an den Skandal der ungeschützten Daten bei Facebook denkt. Im Buch ist es das vergleichbare Portal Everybody, welches dem Protagonist klar zu verstehen gibt, dass seine Daten natürlich an Dritte zu dessem Wohl weitergegeben werden.

Ein hervorragendes Werk. Ich empfehle ganz entgegen meiner Gewohnheit in diesem Fall das Hörbuch, weil Marc-Uwe Klings nölende Stimme einfach die Geschichte noch mehr aufwertet und witziger macht.

[Odai Al-Saeed · Rating 3 out of 5]

سعي دؤوب لتهميش الحس العاطفي ورقمنة الإنسان الآلي ليحل محل الإنسان العادي لتتفشى البطالة وتتجمد المشاعر كي تنتصر الرأسمالية المجردة من العدل الذي ينادي به الكون
إبتداعات الرواي بنيت على أساس الفكرة التي مهدها للدخول في عالم روايته فأسس دولة أخرى بعلامة تجارية مختلفة لتداري ذلك الفشل الذي ما آلت إليه سابقاً تماماً كما تفعل الشركات عندما تفلس وتغير جلدها بهوية جديدة وتسويق مختلف ..يذهب بنا "مارك- أوفة بعيداً في أرض الجودة النوعية ليحلق بخيالاته متهيباً سطوة الآلة وجموح الذكاء الصناعي المدمر فلا شيئ جديد لغريزة الإنسان التي دائماً ما تجنح نحو الإنزلاق بتدمير بني جنسها حتى يصل الأمر إلى تدمير نفسها ..هنا بأسلوب لا يخلو من السخرية يستشرف الكاتب مستقبل التجارة التي سوف تهيمن عليها جهات محددة وإن كان هنا يقصد (شركة أمازون) فالحديث تتسع فيه الخيالات عن ذلك الهوس التحليلي لإستقصاء المعلومة الدقيقة عن الأشخاص فيصبح الفكر الآلي يقرر عنك ويتعرف على ذوقك ومشاعرك إلى أن يصل الأمر إلى أن تصبح الآلة هي المهيمن الأوحد للبشرية
على غرار جورج أوريل أرادت المؤسسة التسويقية المشرفة على ترويج هذا الكتاب أن تصل إلى القارئ متكئة على فكرة الكاتب الإنتقائية والتي تدور حول فكرة الذكاء الصناعي الذي قد يطور نفسه بنفسه ليخرج عن سيطرة صانعه فيصبح سبب تعاسته ..الرواية تقول الكثير وتستحق القراءة لإسلوبها السلس وسرديتها المتهكمة

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Call me a renegade, unbeliever, heretic or just a good old-fashioned spoilsport, but there are no more than three little stars in it for me. The chronicles of Kling's communist kangaroo wasn't really my cup of tea and QualityLand was not much better.

Some passages are really funny and I loved them when I read them, marking diligently and dutifully a whole bunch of stuff. But the bottom line is this: My idea of humor just doesn't quite fit the way it's presented here.

I realized that after gobbling up the book. My brain felt the same way my stomach does after eating a whole bag of potato chips. Saturated, but not satisfied.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

[Auntie Terror · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've never before read a book that made me laugh so much while wondering whether I shouldn't actually rather be sad and/or worried about what I laugh at.

QualityLand might be classed as a humourous dystopian novel, if there is such a thing.
In a not so far-off future in what once was Germany, now rebranded as QualityLand, there lives a man whose life isn't going as dreamed, to say the least. In a world where basically any decision is taken from you and given to algorythms who calculate what you want based on your online profile and data, it can be quite a nuisance when that profile proves faulty. Which is Peter's problem.
So, like any proper unlikely hero, he goes out into the world to fix it, or the world, with the help of illegal hackers, a dysfunctional sex-robot, an e-poetess suffering from writer's block, an acrophobic drone, a communist handheld device, and a pink dolphinshaped sex-toy.

This book is absurd, hilarious, and awfully realistic.

[Paul Ataua · Rating 2 out of 5]

Arrrgh! Everybody loved it except me! The two words that come to mind are ‘hilarious’ and ‘satire’. Unfortunately, I have never found anything described as ‘hilarious’ that funny, and I am not a fan of satire that goes nowhere, satire that that is just a string of jokes bound together, jokes like the one here where we have a vacuum cleaner that was mistakenly sent to a war zone that led to the general reporting that it was the cleanest battlefield he had ever seen. What puzzles me is that it has been compared to ‘The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’, a book I dearly love, and I am trying to understand why I have read ‘Hitchhikers’ two or three times, and yet I struggled to finish this one. Ignore this review and the stingy two stars. I know you are going to love it. Guffaw to your hearts content!

[Jennifer ~ TarHeelReader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Qualityland is unique and genre-bending, described as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy meets 1984. It is entertaining, exciting, and a quick read with short chapters, which I LOVE. I’ve also downloaded the audio to listen to in the future because I previewed the narrator, and I think it’s going even more exciting in that format.

I received a complimentary copy from the publisher.

Many of my reviews can also be found on instagram: www.instagram.com/tarheelreader

[Dalia Nourelden · Rating 4 out of 5]

"فبغض النظر عن مدى تعقيد المحاكاة، يبقى الواقع أكثر تعقيداً."

كواليتي لاند رواية ديستوبيا خيالية قد تكون في المستقبل البعيد او ربما مستقبل قريب وربما هي جزء من حاضرنا بالفعل.

رواية عن التطور والتكنولوجيا وإلى أى مدى يمكن أن تذهب بنا وتتوقع إحتياجاتنا وأفكارنا فتختار لك شريك حياتك المناسب ، تُرسل لك المنتجات التى تحتاجها ، لكن هل أنت بحاجة حقاً لهذا المنتج ؟! الخوارزميات والمعلومات التي جمعها عنك تؤكد ذلك ، ستجد طائرة بلا طيار أمام بابك تقدم لك ما تحتاجه ولك بالطبع حق أن تقوم بإعادة المنتج الذي لا تريده لكن كيف يمكنك أن تقول أنك لست بحاجة إلى هذا المنتج؟ النظام يعرف أكثر منك ، معلوماتك وبياناتك الخاصة تؤكد ذلك لكنك ربما لا تعرف بعد إحتياجك إلى هذا المنتج ، فالآلات لاتخطئ واستنتاجات الأنظمة تعرف أفضل منك .

" عليك أن تسأل نفسك السؤال التالي ، هل نعيش في ديكتاتورية تتبع طرقاً سامية لدرجة لا نشعر معها بأننا نعيش ظل ديكتاتورية؟ ثم عليك أن تسأل نفسك السؤال التالي : هل هي ديكتاتورية ، حتى إن لم يدرك أحد بأنها ديكتاتورية ؟ إذا لم يشعر أحد بالحرمان من حريته ؟ والحرية في النهاية ، وبكل ما تحمله من معنى ، محظورة في كواليتيلاند ، أو لنقول نفذت مؤقتاً من المخازن《ولكن لا يمكن توصيلها للمنازل حالياً》"



في عالم أصبح يعتمد على الآلة والتكنولوجيا في كل شئ حتى انه صنع روبرت ليتقدم لإنتخابات الرئاسة ويصبح الرئيس القادم ، عالم النظام يحدد فيه مستواك بناء على معلومات وأشياء كثيرة وعلى أساسه سيتم إختيار شريك حياتك وعملك وإحتياجاتك وطريقة التعامل معك وليس لك الحق في تعديل هذه البيانات أو التعرف عليها .

"اليوم نحن أناس بداخلنا آلات صغيرة تحركنا."

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في عالم تصبح أسم العائلة ليس أسم ابيك لكن وظيفة والدك للرجل ووظيفة والدتك للأنثي ، في هذا العالم يحيا بيتر العاطل عن العمل وظيفته أن يقوم بتدمير الآلات العاطبة عن العمل لكن هناك بعض الأشياء التي لم يقوم بتدميرها والتي سيكون لها دور في روايتنا . يصبح تصنيف بيتر بأنه "عديم الفائدة" لكنه لا يهتم كثيراً بذلك ويتقبل الأمر الواقع حتى يحصل في أحد الايام على أحد المنتجات لكنه لايرغب في هذا المنتج فيحاول إعادته لكن الشركة ترفض طلبه وتؤكد انه بحاجة إلى هذا المنتج ، فالإعتراف بالخطأ يعنى أن النظام قابل للخطأ وأن ملفه الشخصي ليس صحيح مما قد يتسبب في مشكلات أخرى وهذا شئ لا يمكن السماح به فماذا سيفعل بيتر ؟ هل سيستطيع فعل شئ ام سيستسلم ؟

"عديم الفائدة ، الذي لا تعرض عليه أي خيارات ، سوى البقاء كعديم الفائدة. فخياراتي أشبه بمروحة يدوية، تطوى مع كل نقرة، حتى لا يبقى أمامي سوى الذهاب في اتجاه واحد فقط.. سرقتم كل زوايا وحواف شخصيتي! وجردتم طريق حياتي من كل الدروب الفرعية !"

لم تكن لدى توقعات للرواية لكنها أعجبتني وإستطاعت جذبي وإثارة إهتمامي ، قد تكون بها بعض الإطالة لكن الأسلوب جميل والترجمة أيضا . وإلى الجزء الثاني .

٦ / ٦ / ٢٠٢٥

[محمد خالد شريف · Rating 4 out of 5]

"هل فكرت يوماً، بأنه قد يكون من النعم، أن لا يعرف المرء تفاصيل شيء ما؟ بأننا نحتاج أحياناً إلى تلك المساحة من الحُرية، التي يمنحنا إياها المجهول؟ أعني، هل يُمكننا أن نكون أحرار حقاً، إذا تم قياس وتحديد كل شيء في حياتنا بدقة؟ كيف يكون الحال، إن عشنا في عالم مُرتب بدقة، ولكن بشكل خاطئ؟"

تدور أحداث رواية "كواليتي لاند" في المانيا –سابقاً-، كواليتي لاند –حالياً-، في مُستقبل قريب نكاد نشم رائحته ونرى أثاره المُختلفة مهما تلونت الطرق الخيالية التي استخدمها "مارك- أوفه كلينغ" ليصبغ حكايته الديستوبية القاتمة، التي ورغم حسه الفكاهي الساخر لتخفيف سودواية الأحداث ولكن سيظل الرُعب مُتمسك بأفكارك؛ التي ستفجر خلايا رأسك من كثرة التشابهات بين واقع الرواية المُتخيل، وواقعنا الحقيقي، كُل تلك الرمزيات والإسقاطات المجنونة أحياناً والواقعية أحياناً تكاد تتلف خلايا رأسك المسكينة.
إنها رواية عن مواجهة النظام، عن مواجهة التطور الكاسح، فلو كان يُثير ذعرك ذلك الإعلان عن المنتج الذي تحدثت عنه مع صديقك عبر الهاتف فوجدته على وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي في كُل مكان، أنت تُريد هذا المنتج، أنت تُريده وبشدة، فماذا ستفعل عندما يكون ذلك المنتج لا تُريده، ولكن النظام يقول أنك تُريده؟ هل ستتبع النظام كأي وطني يُحب نظام بلده؟ ولكن كيل "بيتر" قد طفح وثار وماج، "بيتر" العاطل عن العمل، الذي يُدمر الآلات العاطبة عن العمل، يعيش حياة عادية، بل أقل من العادية، حياة يُحدد فيها النظام والخوارزميات ما يُريده، ما وظيفته، ما المكان الذي يسكن فيه، من يواعد، من يُحب، ماذا يأكل، وماذا يفعل، بل وحتى يحدد لك الأخبار التي يُريد لتراها، وبالطبع سيُحدد لك من ستختار كرئيس دولتك، فمن الذي يعيش هذه الحياة، بيتر أم النظام؟

كان "بيتر" مُتقبلاً لكل تلك التقييدات، حتى أن حبيبته تركته لترتبط بشخص أعلى مستوى منه، ولم يُبالي، حتى وصله ذلك الهزاز على شكل دولفين، ويقول النظام أنه يحتاجه، هذا ما تُظهره بياناتك يا "بيتر"، ولكن "بيتر" الواثق من ميوله تماماً، يقول أنه لا يريد هذا الهزاز الدولفيني الغبي، ومن هنا يصل "بيتر" إلى معلومة مهمة جداً، ماذا لو أخطأ النظام؟ ماذا لو ملفه الشخصي –الذي لا يُسمح بتعديله- مكتوب به بيانات خاطئة؟ والأهم من ذلك، لماذا لا يستطيع تعديل بياناته؟ ألا يتغير الشخص؟ ولكن النظام له رأي مُغاير تماماً.

"كواليتي لاند" هي رواية ساخرة ومجنونة، خيالية تتنبأ بواقع يقترب بشدة، بنا الكاتب عالمها من الصفر، ورغم أن الفكرة ليست مُستحدثة تماماً، ولكنها كانت تحتاج كاتب مجنون وذكي مثل "كلينغ" لكي تكون بهذا الجمال، والعمق، فيجعلنا رغم فُكاهة الأحداث نُدرك السودواية الكامنة خلفه، والتحذيرات المُختلفة من الأتمتمة التي تحصل لجنس البشر، فبعد ما كُنا نستخدم الآلات لراحتنا وتحقيق غايتنا، أصبحنا مجرد بيانات تستخدمها الآلات لكي تتربح الشركات الأكبر حجماً، ويزداد النظام ثراءاً ونفوذاً، وأصبحت حياتناً مُجرد سيناريو محفوظ مُحدد سلفاً نقوم بأداءه ولا نستطيع الحياد عنه، وإلا سنصبح في مواجهة النظام. وأنت تعرف جيداً ماذا يحدث لمن يواجه النظام، أليس كذلك؟

بكل تأكيد رواية مُمتعة ورائعة، ويُنصح بها.

[Cecily · Rating 5 out of 5]

My review of this hugely entertaining book is for another edition, HERE.

This is NOT a review.
It’s a messy and incomplete list of the many books, films, theories that are referenced directly and indirectly.
It may be the basis of a Bingo drinking game.
But it’s not a review.

Don’t click to view unless you’ve read the book and want to compare.



Films, books, TV

* Peter Jobless has aspects of
• Kafka’s Josef K
• Orwell’s Winston Smith
• Terry Gilliam’s Sam Lowry (in Brazil)
• Douglas Adams’ Arthur Dent

* Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (see my old, barely a review, review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list... :
• The book itself.
• Several defunct machines have Marvin-like qualities, including an e-attorney that developed a conscience and a self-driving car that’s lost all sense of location and direction.
• Kiki has an electronic thumb for hitching a ride.

* Kafka: Peter Jobless is the little guy, fighting a bewildering system, like Josef K

* Orwell’s 1984, especially Newspeak. See my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
• Mandated superlatives
• War becomes "Security Operations for the Protection of Trade Routes and Natural Resource Supply"
• Soldiers are "Quality-Securers"

* Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, itself heavily echoing 1984: the plot and the character of Peter Jobless.

* Monty Python
• Dead Parrot - returning something, “I’ve come to make a complaint”
• Life of Brian: Peter gets a supportive message from “The People’s Front of Judea”, calling him Brian.
• Milkman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiVGS...

* Terminator - the machines in the cellar watch it
* Wall-E, “the little robot trying to put everything back in order”
* Robot Wars - collectible stickers
* Knight Rider (suggested nickname for Personal Digital Friend is KITT)
* Star Wars: The old man sends a holo message that starts, “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi… You’re my only hope”
* Black Mirror, Nosedive (levels and likes): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosediv...
and https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5497778/...
* Jenifer Aniston movies: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000098/?...
* Wizard of Oz (for answers and fixing things): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Won...
* Vonnegut (but what, specifically?)
* Generic sci-fi tropes that Calliope want to write as novels
* Minority Report: algorithms predict crimes, and people are pre-emptively arrested
* Game of Thrones
* Transformers - as a film, but also a robot that transforms for easy transport, and Optimus is a suggested nickname for a Personal Digital Friend
* Ronald Opus type defence used in a court case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_...

But no Dr Who or Star Trek - that I noticed.

Updated and custom-adapted books and films
* Pride and Prejudice - sexually explicit version
* The Trial - a thriller with Josef K going on a gun rampage
* Romeo and Juliet - "the child porno classic... with an explosive and slightly necrophiliac finale"
* The Diary of Anne Frank - with a happy ending, including a pony
* The Bible - all the juicy bits, condensed to 100 pages, including Jehovah saying "I am your father" (cf Star Wars)
* Realistic Expectations
* The Grapes (no wrath)
* "Tolstoy's great masterpiece, War"
* Star Wars - Episode 16
* The Fasted and Most Furious Ever [remember the diktat about superlatives?]
* A remake(!) of The Coca-Cola Movie
* Lemmings -the Movie ("highly-praised suicide drama")
* Frogger - the Film (one for oldies like me!)

Socio-political-economic issues

* USA 2016- present:
• There’s a Department of “Alternative Facts” (a term coined by Kellyanne Conway, 22 January, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alterna...)
• Populist presidential candidate claims “there’s no one in the world less racist than me” before launching a tirade negative racist stereotypes.
• There's an Elon Musk Square.

* Malthus/tech, see my review of Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, HERE.

* The internet had idealistic beginnings, but digital markets are winner-takes-all and lead to global monopolies of vast size and power.

* Familiar names, slightly changed:
• Google is What I Need
• Amazon is TheShop
• Facebook is Everybody (if you can’t be bothered to join, the algorithms will create a profile and post status updates)
• iPad is QualityPad - unlocked by TouchKiss
• QualityPartner is… whatever the biggest dating site is.

* Lenin, “Every society is three meals away from chaos”

* Luddite rebels: the Machine-Breakers.

Science, theology, philosophy

• What use is free speech if there’s no one to hear?
• Arthur C Clarke, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
• Isaac Asimov, Three Laws of Robotics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_L...
• The German Code
• Turing Test
• Trolley problem: because machines think so quickly, all motor accidents include moral decisions
• Bertrand Russell
• Moore’s law of exponential growth of tech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%2...
• Jevons Paradox, that increased efficiency increases demand, so resources are used up faster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_...
• Moravec’s Paradox, that it’s relatively easy to create machines with rapid processing to perform “intelligence” tasks, but very hard to endow them with the perception and motor skills of a toddler: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec...
• Humans don’t understand randomness at a gut level (hence, Apple had to tweak the iPod’s shuffle algorithm to avoid patterns that didn’t feel random), but they can subvert it (Kiki buys strange things).
• Trust in search engines: “A single diverging result is enough to ensure people don't’ doubt their integrity.” (John of Us tweaks so four of five top hits about him are positive.)
• A God-like superintelligence could be benevolent, indifferent, or hostile to humans. And yet all those options could have catastrophic consequences for humanity.
• Various types of predestination and self-fulfilling prophecies: ante-natal scans predict a life history (with the option to buy genetic upgrades)