Marc-Uwe Kling: QualityLand (Hardcover, Czech language, 2021)
Hardcover, 384 pages
Czech language
Published Feb. 25, 2021
Vítejte v QualityLandu, v zemi blízké budoucnosti! Vše tu funguje hladce: Automatizovaná služba vám dohodí dokonalého partnera a spolehlivé algoritmy společnosti TheShop vědí, co přesně chcete, ještě předtím, než si to vyberete. Ale i v QualityLandu se najdou vadné kousky – dron se strachem z létání nebo bojový robot trpící posttraumatickou stresovou poruchou. A ty všechny má šrotovník Peter Jobless nechat zničit. Co když se ale vzepře systému?
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.
Der Autor hält der digitalen Welt in seinem Buch Qualityland einen Spiegel vor, welcher in vielen Dingen bereits heute erschreckend realistische Züge hat. Das Buch war für mich nicht der Kracher schlechthin, aber eine kurzwellige Geschichte, die zum Nachdenken angeregt.
Jako nastup hodne hustej. Rozsekalo me to nekolikrat slusne. Satira spolecnosti, kde big corp otevrene kupci s uzivateli a kazdej ma ve spolecnosti hodnotu od jedne do sta (kde jedna ani sto nikdo nema, aby slapal jeste vys nebo se necitil jako luzr, i kdyz vsichni pod 10 sou luzri tak jako tak, teda pardon oficialne "nymandi"). Po case trosku monotonni. Porad nektery napady fakt pecka. Ale mam takovej pocit, ze to zrovna neni nadcasova bomba. Fajn odpocinkovy cteni, clovek se docela zasmeje, vic tam ale imo neni.
Very funny! I love well written satire!
If you want to write a proper scathing critique of today's world you have to be a cynic, humorist or a SF writer with a taste for dystopias. Good thing Marc-Uwe is all four.
In a world where algorithms dictate everything (correctly or not) there exists a country that with advice of PR firm decided to do complete image change. So it let silicon valey, or its equivalent take over everything and change its name to Qualityland to avoid all of its historical responsibility. Of course everything is the BEST in Qualityland, with all caps and don't you forget that, there is fine if you do.
I approve of this approach, by keeping the location of the story ambiguous you understand that it might be your home in 50+ years, so pay attention.
Anyway, back to the story. We follow our dear average Joe Peter Jobless who is facing bad …
If you want to write a proper scathing critique of today's world you have to be a cynic, humorist or a SF writer with a taste for dystopias. Good thing Marc-Uwe is all four.
In a world where algorithms dictate everything (correctly or not) there exists a country that with advice of PR firm decided to do complete image change. So it let silicon valey, or its equivalent take over everything and change its name to Qualityland to avoid all of its historical responsibility. Of course everything is the BEST in Qualityland, with all caps and don't you forget that, there is fine if you do.
I approve of this approach, by keeping the location of the story ambiguous you understand that it might be your home in 50+ years, so pay attention.
Anyway, back to the story. We follow our dear average Joe Peter Jobless who is facing bad finances, bad ratings for his scraping business, bad rating for his enthusiasm, bad ratings for his health and fitness, bad ratings for being average basically. Thus the almighty algorithms decide that he must be a loser and they in their infinite wisdom decide to buy him with his own money without his knowledge or permission a dolphin shaped dildo to cheer him up.
Disappointed in his life and now also greatly annoyed he decides to go on a herculean task to return this thing no mater the cost and challenge the almighty eldritch monster know as the shop algorithm.
Except of just following our protagonist on his epic quest, we get further glimpses into this world which is eerily familiar. This book gives of Brave New World vibes, but again this is a comedy.
Now the reason I gave this book a 4 instead of a 5 star review, was for its humor. Some of the jokes were too on the nose and some I greatly suspect were lost in translation. I bet that if I read this book in German as it was written it would get that 5 star rating easily.
Als ich das Buch irgendwann 2019 gelesen hab, war ich nicht sehr begeistert davon. Vielleicht auch, weil ich es mehr oder weniger überflogen hab, da mir der Anfang todlangweilig kam und ich einfach nur wissen wollte, ob es zum Ende hin irgendwie noch spannend wird.
Nun, im Februar 2021 haben wir das Buch als Lektüre gelesen, wobei ich dadurch einige Seiten zu lesen bekam, die ich während dem Überfliegen in 2019 wohl übersprungen habe. Ich hab’s also praktisch erneut gelesen, nur mit mehr Seiten. Jetzt macht die Story mehr Sinn, lol.
Story:
Wie oben beschrieben, vorerst langweilig. Als wir das in der Schule angefangen haben, fand ich es wieder langweilig. (Vor allem, da ich das Ende ja schon kannte). Aber ich hab mich mal zusammengerissen und jede Seite durchgezogen. Macht wirklich mehr Sinn, muss ich sagen. Naja, wer schaut ja auch bei einer Serie nur ein paar Folgen von jeder …
QualityLand is an important satire that explains all the problems with Facebook, Google and alike in a really interesting way. It basically says: what happens if all those algorithms and business tactics are the most important thing in a not so distant future world. If you want to explain some friends why Facebook and Google need to be limited in their powers, you just might give them this book. They will learn a lot and laugh a bit, too.
As good as the book, maybe even better. I don't know whether that is because of the edition (black vs. gray) or because of Kling's abilities as a reader.
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, …
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.
