Krishna
This novel is set sometime in the “future”. Mankind has gone through the last of the Wars and now is at permanent peace. America, the leading Industrial nation, has now found the perfect solution for a peaceful society.
Let everyone be provided for, so that there is no hunger and basic necessities are taken care of. Further, anything that men of less IQ can do has been automated and done by machines. Only the best and brightest can even cross into the industrial hub across the river called Illium Works, ruled by EPICAC, the worlds biggest and cleverest super computer. All others have only two careers open to them: Join the Army (which, without any war or even skirmishes is a parading corporation) or Recreation and Reclamation (repairs etc), lovingly called ‘Reeks and Wrecks’ for short. Computers decide whether a person has what it takes to make it to Illium or whether they have to settle for one of these two. People are demotivated and dispirited, which is puzzling because, hey, they are not hungry nor do they want of any modern amenities.
The son of the man who founded it, Dr Paul Proteus, is a rising star in the hierarchy. (His father is long dead). He has doubts on whether this is the right way to run the society. When his friend, Finnerty, a brilliant scientist, rebels and resigns and joins unsavoury characters, Paul is torn apart in his mind. He wants to go back to the primitive world of people toiling with their own hands, making everything manually, and getting mental satisfaction out of it.
The story has several morals: Don’t mechanize over a limit, it is bad. People will be unhappy unless given meaningful things to do.Progress need not always be good.. And so on.
Unfortunately, it is as boring as a college lecture by an inept teacher. It reads like preaching. The only funny parts are unintentional, since the story was written in 1962 and Kurt does not have a soaring imagination a la Arthur C. Clark, in this book at least. The powerful entity is a supercomputer called EPICAC (A very thinly veiled ENIAC, one of the first mainframes ever constructed?). They still use a lot of valves and circuit breakers and tapes and what not. Engineers rule the world because they can build anything. And so on.
What is worse, there is a very annoying Shah of Bratpur with his annoying language (more like a dimwit speak) and even more of a superior attitude of Americans about the “ignorant outsider” tone in the novel. What should be amusing ends up being annoying.
And then there are shades of 1984 (Big Brother Watches over you) but again, Kurt does not come anywhere close to creating the atmosphere that George Orwell efforlessly creates.
Can you believe that there is a description of the various parts that are lying on the street in alphabetical order that fills about two full pages? (running through capacitors, resistors etc).
Ultimately, it left me with a big yawn throughout the book. It has its brief (very brief) moments, but surely not worth the effort of reading the book.
I don’t mean to damn Kurt as an author, because I know he is a legend, but I can only comment on what I have read, and this is the only book of his that I have read so far.
I would say a 2/10
— Krishna