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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good fun, but no masterpiece, 29 Jun 2002
I had heard this book was an outrageously funny masterpiece of black humor, so finally, after many years I tracked it down at the library. While I discovered is a brief satire with a one joke premise that's diverting, but ages quickly. Told in 26 chapters-each of whose first word follows the sequence of the alphabet (Chapter 1, "As"; Chapter 2 "Broaching"; Chapter 3. "Culpritwise" and so on, at least until the final letters, where Sladek's gusto for this very little joke seems have run dry)-the story tells of a sociopathic robot in future America.Tik-Tok has "asimov circuits" which are supposed to keep him from harming humans, but somehow these aren't working, or as he suggests at one point, never really existed in the first place, but are part of some massive groupthink. The result is that Tik-Tok kills sadistically over the course of the book, all while building himself a corporate empire and manipulating social and political opinion so that robots are allowed to own property and vote. This is all fairly predictable from the beginning, but what I did find unexpectedly interesting are the parallels with Bret Easton Ellis' highly controversial novel American Psycho, which was written eight years later. In both, an outwardly impeccable character engages in nasty sadism, even tells other people what's he's done, only to have them think it's a joke. Mixed in with Tik-Tok's ascension are his reminisces of past owners, which are mostly played to comic effect, with a running commentary equating robots with slaves. Traditional caretakers of the moral status quo such as priests, judges, military, and aristocracy are repeatedly revealed to be charlatans, sadists, and just plain crazy. On the other end of the spectrum, the civil rights do-gooders of the "Wages For Robots" movement come under equal unsubtle satirical attack, as does the celebrity media industry. Capitalism itself, along with the military-industrial complex is further fodder for Sladek's acid pen. Ultimately, however, none of the satire is as subtle as I would have liked, and much of the book reads like an author riffing on familiar subjects. It's a nice addition to robot literature, but hardly the masterpiece it's made out to be.
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by Norman Spinrad
by Connie Willis
by John Sladek
by Joe Haldeman
by Robert A. Heinlein
