Player Piano

First Edition Hardcover

Player Piano is the first novel by Vonnegut, originally published in hardcover on August 18, 1952 by Charles Scribner’s Sons and reprinted in paperback under the name Utopia 14 by Bantam Books two years later. Vonnegut began developing the ideas in Player Piano in 1949-1950 while working at the public relations department of General Electric in Schenectady, New York, using Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and Fritz Lang's film Metropolis as inspiration. By early 1951, Vonnegut had written an outline and the first few chapters, enough for his agent Kenneth Littauer to sell an option on the book to Lewis Henry "Harry" Brague Jr. of Charles Scribner's Sons. The novel was written mostly in a rented summer cottage in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with the first draft completed at Vonnegut's recently purchased home in Osterville, Massachusetts by November 1951. The manuscript was accepted before Christmas and published in August 1952.

Set primarily in the city of Ilium, New York, the story takes place ten years after the end of the Third World War in which machinery was forced to replace the human workers sent to fight. All American industry was integrated into a unified and computer-planned economy with almost all productive labor done by machines. After the war, civil unrest followed when many people sought to return their jobs, leading to strict anti-sabotage laws. Now, only those with doctorate degrees are employed in jobs that bring money and prestige, while all other men in the United States are employed by the Army or the public Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps. Dr. Paul Proteus, a well-known and successful engineer at the Ilium Works, begins questioning the wisdom of the current social and economic structure.