Paperback, 381 pages
German language
Published March 31, 2019 by Ullstein Taschenbuch.
Was soll ich sagen, ich lieb das Buch halt. Die Selbstreferenzen, der Humor, die Dystopie – Es ist perfekt.
A very near future, in which social networks literally determine our social standing, online shopping purchases are made automatically based on our profiles, and almost every job has been automated by AI and androids.
Peter Unemployed (surnames are your parent's job at the time of our birth) is a low status second hand scrap dealer, who secretly saves the robots that are sent to him for compacting, and keeps them in his basement, where they watch reruns of Terminator, and the movies of Jennifer Anniston. The Store automatically purchases for him a dolphin-shaped vibrator, based on his supposed algorithmically-derived preferences, but he doesn't want it.
So begins his crusade to return an unwanted purchase, which The Store refuses; they only accept returns of unwanted purchases, and he clearly does want it, as the algorithm can't make mistakes!
Meanwhile, the president of QualityLand is algorithmically forecast to die soon, and the …
A very near future, in which social networks literally determine our social standing, online shopping purchases are made automatically based on our profiles, and almost every job has been automated by AI and androids.
Peter Unemployed (surnames are your parent's job at the time of our birth) is a low status second hand scrap dealer, who secretly saves the robots that are sent to him for compacting, and keeps them in his basement, where they watch reruns of Terminator, and the movies of Jennifer Anniston. The Store automatically purchases for him a dolphin-shaped vibrator, based on his supposed algorithmically-derived preferences, but he doesn't want it.
So begins his crusade to return an unwanted purchase, which The Store refuses; they only accept returns of unwanted purchases, and he clearly does want it, as the algorithm can't make mistakes!
Meanwhile, the president of QualityLand is algorithmically forecast to die soon, and the resulting presidential campaign, for the first time, includes an Android candidate!
Will John of Us be the next president? Will Peter manage to personally return an unwanted purchase to the CEO of The Store, with the help of his team of defective robots (an author bot with witers block, a drone that's afraid of heights, a sex-bot that fell in love with his last customer, …) and a mysterious hacker from the dark net?
A satire that reads like a Black Mirror episode written by Douglas Adams, this is unserious reading with ominous underpinnings.
Content warning Inhalt
Ich weiß nicht, Marc-Uwe Kling macht ein hervorragendes Bühnenprogramm, aber schreibt keine gute Romane. Vieles ist etwas plump, die Rechten sind dumm, haha, und machen Rechtschreibfehler, haha. Die Kapitalisten sind gierige Geizhalse und ganz böse. Dann wird der Leser mit Wissensvermittlung traktiert, die nichts mit der Geschichte zu tun hat (Der Alte erklärt Superintelligenz, der Alte erklärt das Internet und Netzwerkeffekte), also das Gegenteil von Show Don't Tell.
Man hat nicht das Gefühl eine Geschichte zu lesen, sondern eine parodistische Anmerkung zu unserer Kultur, was dann alles notdurftig in einen Plot eingewoben wird.
Auch sprachlich brilliert es nicht. Klar, das ein oder andere, manchmal auch recycelte Wortspiel ist dabei, aber...nunja.
Ich persönlich kann es nicht empfehlen.
Einfach super, aber bin auch großer Fan der Bücher von @marcuwekling@cultur.social
ich erwartete ein Werk dass mit dem Känguru mithalten kann. Das bekam ich leider nicht. Gut wird das Buch leider erst nach dem ersten Viertel, davor ist es doch recht eintönig und z.B. die spöttischen Kommentare, wie sie das Känguru äußern würde, fehlten ersatzlos.
Dafür hielt sich der Autor umso stärker mit Einführung in das Szenario und Erklärungen auf.
Das Ende ist dafür umso besser und man würde gerne noch gleich einen Nachfolger konsumieren.
