Robert Fromont reviewed Qualityland by Marc-Uwe Kling
Like Black Mirror written by Douglas Adams
4 stars
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.
