City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

QualityLand, Marc-Uwe Kling ; translated from the German into English by Jamie Lee Searle

eng

no index present

fiction

QualityLand

Marc-Uwe Kling ; translated from the German into English by Jamie Lee Searle

Everything in QualityLand is geared towards optimizing your life. QualityPartner identifies your ideal mate, earworm personal assistants get you where you need to go and android drones know you need a six pack of beer at the end of a long day even before you crave one. Humans, robots and algorithms co-exist, everything is seamlessly corporatised, stratified and monetized. Your very name reveals much of what we need to know about you and your profile discloses the rest. Peter Jobless is a down and out metal press operator, dumped by his long term girlfriend when she is alerted to a better option on her QualityPad. But Peter has another problem - he seems to be the only one noticing that his fellow Qualityland robot citizens are experiencing an existential crisis. There is a drone who's afraid to fly. A sex droid with erectile dysfunction. A combat robot with PTSD. Instructed to destroy these malfunctioning A.I., Peter starts to suspect the technology that rules us all has a flaw, perhaps a fatal one. Not only that, these robots might be his only friends

Quality Land