Rating: 
Summary: The Player Piano
Review: Man versus machine is this book's timely theme. "No more spput, puttt or rrrrut!" says Kurt Vonnegut. Player Piano is well worth reading; Vonnegut is the unique author who succeeds in making a reader ponder deeply and laugh heartily all on one page. His main character, Dr. Paul Proteus, is humanely and expertly portrayed in complete contrast to the unfeeling mechanical inventions he has helped to build. Paul is the unpretentious, laidback, and wise electrical engineering manager of Ileum Works near New York. He becomes painfully aware that these repetitive 'musical' monsters have taken over worthy folks' careers and lives. His concern, and that of Vonnegut's main characters, is sensitively portrayed amid clever irony and spontaneous humor. Kurt makes us feel their loss of dignity, not only in their name, Reeks and Wrecks, but also in their low wages, indifferent dress, and separation from managers and machines. Though everyone, regardless of I.Q., has a number, Kurt makes us fell these are prisoners without freedom, escaping from problems in their Homestead pub.Vonnegut's irony runs throughout, one incident involving Paul when his old beat up Plymouth 'dies' on him while visiting Homestead. Though a renowned manager, he couldn't fix it. Along came a rough laborer who not only found the trouble, but also made a new gasket for the car, and instead of putt putting after that, the car purred smoothly. The husband-wife relationship is another irony where romance is a matter of mechanics: "I love you, Paul!" "I love you, too, Anita!" Their contrasting characters are very interesting; Paul, desperate to get back to his roots and to nature, buys an old rundown farm where he hopes to work with his hands. Anita, on seeing it, arranges for all of its old tools and old-fashioned articles to become electronic. Paul's depth and integrity are contrasted with her shallowness throughout the book, like two antagonists purging with swords. Vonnegut's supreme irony has to be when Paul is ready to quit, even turning down a Pittsburgh promotion, and is requested by the big boss to infiltrate The Ghost Shirt Society (really the Worker's Union), a cause to which Paul has already (unbeknown to all the upper crust managers) committed himself. So the 'used' becomes the 'user' unbeknown to them all. Thrust into the honor of the title, Deliverer of The Ghost Shirts, he joins the rebels to overthrow management and machines. Build up and climax are great. Though Finnerty, Hasher, and Neumann seemed content with results, despite the fact that they did lose, Paul stood apart thoughtfully and sadly. As he gazed at twisted wires and wrecked machines that were once man-made invention, he pondered that one day, disregarding thee emotionless egg-heads of evolution future inventors and programmers would be born to create stronger, more challenging and, though emotionless, mind-controlling machines. The one distraction is the Shah visiting American technology. But it is so hilarious that it's an asset especially when he meets Epic Ac XIV, the machine wiser than the wisest man. The Shah, though we laugh at him, is the wise one. He thinks American citizens and army soldiers as slaves because only slaves would do as they're told. I found this book to be uncannily accurate, especially since it was written in 1952. As an aspiring engineer, it made me think of how advanced technology will be by the time I have reached my goal. I can't even imagine what it will be like in two or three years, while Vonnegut, somehow, knew what life might be like 50 years later. It's a must read!
Rating:
Summary: A must read for anyone interested in social issues
Review: This book is a very interesting book. Anyone who decides to buy this book will be done it in about a week. The premise of the book focuses on a person who inadvertantly messed up they sysytem and tries to make it right. This book has almost every type of subject matter ranging from drama to war to machinazation of idustries to the social impact of machines on people in everyday life. This book may seem to be technically, but once the book starts it grabs you and every page gets better and better.
Rating:
Summary: A very interesting, well written book.
Review: This was the first book of Vonnegut's that I have ever read and I found it to be a very well written, interesting book. When I read the description of the book, I did not think I would like it. But once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down. Vonnegut does an excellent job of always keeping the reader wondering about what will happen next. I liked how the book had a few different stories that it followed and how they all came together in the end. For me, this added to my curiosity as I was reading because I was trying to figure out how everything tied in together. This book really got me thinking. Vonnegut wrote it back in 1952 about a world dominated by machines and how people were getting replaced in their jobs by these machines and felt useless, like there was no point to their lives. Today, as technology is advancing, computers are becoming more and more a part of everyday life. Are we headed in the direction of a world dominated by computers? Are we already there? Lastly, I think Vonnegut did a good job of emphasizing the importance of fighting for what you believe in, no matter how bad the odds are against you. The first half of the book really just built up the feeling of people being dissatisfied with the way things were. The second half of this book really showed what people were doing to try and fix their lives. Although the Ghost Shirt Society may have lost the physical battle against the machines, they still came out winners in the end. They took their chances and stood up for what they believed in. I think is a very good book and would recommend it to anyone.
Rating: 
Summary: Player Piano
Review: After reading this book, I was amazed at how someone during that time period could write something so drastic and get it published. Before reading this book, I had never read anything by Kurt Vonnegut. However, once I finished it, I decided that it was so intriguing that I wanted to read other works of his, so I bought Slaughterhouse-five. After only reading part of Slaughterhouse-five, I found that these two books are quite different and that I actually like Player Piano more than Slaughterhouse-five even though Slaughterhouse-five is better known. I believe that being an engineering student affects that opinion greatly because I can better understand the concepts of machines doing work that regular people once did. The main character in Player Piano provides such a great portrait of what happens to a lot of engineers and other people in such technical fields. The stress that Paul Proteus undergoes and the effects that it has on his well-being matches almost perfectly some engineers and other technically inclined people that I know. Based on this experience, I think that this book would be a great read for anyone who has some sort of technical background, but that it is definitely not for the younger, less knowledgeable group of people. I think that it actually might help people in Proteus's situation because it will give them an outlet to relieve all the stress that is created in such an environment.
Rating:
Summary: Not so funny
Review: This is Vonnegut's first book and is not the typically satirical comedies it is more of serios view of a second industrial age. The book is very thoughtfull and worth a read if your a Vonnegut fan you need to get this book because it provides intersting difrences from his later works but I would not suggest this as a first read of his books.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining but unoriginal
Review: Player Piano is one of Vonnegut's longest novels. And though very enjoyable, I figured out what was nagging me the entire time I read it - Player Piano is an extrapolated retelling of the plot of Fritz Lang's classic silent movie Metropolis (1926). Nonetheless, Vonnegut took the 115 minute silent movie, which would probably translate into a 40 page book, and wrote in detail and additional subplots to fill out an additional 300 pages that are well worth reading.
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Summary: A good book, although not typically Vonnegut
Review: Player Piano is Vonnegut's first work. It's also quite different from most of Vonnegut's other works. The writing has much less "Vonnegut punch" to it than Vonnegut's other novels. However, that's not to say that it wasn't as good. Player Piano is a story of the world in the future, seen from the eyes of Paul, dissatisfied leader of Illium works. Everything is run by machines. Because of this, there are only two types of people. Educated people who work running, regulating, and designing machines, and un-educated people who perform manual tasks machines cannot (ex-road repair). These two types of people live on different sides of town, with very different life styles. They associate with eachother as little as possible. Paul soon realizes that the creation of machines has ruined the lives of many people that could have become something. If only the people would unite, and the machines be destroyed, quality of life could be improved- that is the general theme of this book. Of course, the plot has more depth and is actually very entertaining at parts. There were quite a few "side plots" put in by Vonnegut to stress the theme and make the story more interesting. At times, they did just that. At other times, they seemed unnecessary and just distracted me from the plot. (So be sure to concentrate when reading this book). My only other complaint was that Vonnegut almost used the entire first half of the book to introduce the characters and set the scene for later "action". This is both good and bad. I DO recommend you read this book. It's entertaining, and the moral of the story is very true. Begin reading Player Piano when you have some sort of energy to concentrate, so you can pick up on the characters and story line. You'll get the most out of it that way. Overall, it's a good, entertaining read.
Rating: 
Summary: Before He Was Famous
Review: I read PLAYER PIANO because Kurt Vonnegut is by far my favorite writer, and because I'm a completist. I'm glad I did. It's a decent post-pulp-heyday, Eisenhower-era dystopian sci-fi work, and as a period piece and an example of early Vonnegut, it's fascinating. It's not, however, terribly GOOD. It's clearly an author's first novel, and Vonnegut could have used a better editor, because it seems the one he had was writing this off as a dime-store novel by an unknown. A more exacting editor would undoubtedly have torn apart the more glaring problems: Dangling plot threads, a lumbering first third, entire themes forgotten for chapters at a time. Still, even the best editor in the world could not fix other problems, such as the fact that Vonnegut had yet to find his voice (although echos of it are there, particularly in the characterization and the subplot involving the Arab visitor). And nobody could have seen how dated the novel would look today, given that the 50's-era brand of mechanization has given way to the 80's-era brand of digitization, an entirely different dynamic. PLAYER PIANO is not a BAD novel, just a decent one. It's fun for us fans to see Vonnegut develop as a novelist over the course of his next three novels, each of which is progressively better: THE SIRENS OF TITAN, MOTHER NIGHT and finally his masterpiece CAT'S CRADLE. For Vonnegut fans and sci-fi historians, this is essential. For casual readers, I'd recommend skipping straight to MOTHER NIGHT.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic Book
Review: Somewhat uncharacteristic of Vonnegut's work, Player Piano is a bit more serious, a bit more science fiction. The way it makes you feel when you read it is something like when you read Fight Club: you're stirred up, you have to DO something, but you don't know what, because the waters are muddied. Is technology bad or good? Which is more important, being a good person or having know-how? This book is a terrific read, is thick with detail and plot, and is one of my favorites both by Vonnegut, and in terms of fiction in general.
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Summary: Vonnegut's first is Vonnegut's finest
Review: Many consider Slaughter House Five to be Vonnegut's finest work. I respectfully disagree (although I do like that one as well). In this, Vonnegut's first published novel, we get the story of Paul Proteus who strikes out against all he was raised to revere and protect. Anyone who appreciates that sub-genre of Science Fiction that takes theposition that technological advance isn't always all it's cracked up to be owes it to himself to read this book.
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