Bugs
(John Sladek)
If you liked TV comedy series Newsradio, you might like this book. The British writer Fred Jones goes to America in search of his fortune and is mistakenly hired as a software engineer in a company that develops a battle robot for the military. However, things at the firm seem pretty confused, for exampled, Fred is sacked and re-hired almost every day, the developers of the robot have most extraordinary ideas about it - and one of them is a deranged mass murderer. The robot itself does not seem to know if it is a battle robot or a philosopher, playing endlessly with words and meanings. A bunch of spies from different countries are of course after the secrets of the robot and try to buy every member of the company in turn. A female Russian agent makes Fred a tempting offer but only promises to pay in rubles. Gullible Fred throws away a big check sent by a Japanese agent but finally rescues it from the garbage and offers it as a compensation to the guy he replaced in the company. The guy uses the money to found a company for producing little toy robots and offers Fred a share in it, but finally the robots prove dangerous and the company goes bankrupt. Fred seems to be one of the eternal loosers who just never quite make it. The author, who is of Midwestern origin, does not seem to appreciate his home country too much. He pictures it as the promised land of plastic and supermarkets. The absurd and sinister mood of the book is accentuated by recurring news of poisoned medicines and restaurant shooting and the endless ads: 'You may already have won million dollars...' This is not a typical sci-fi book but more of a satire characterized with its own kind of wry and black humour, worth reading if you happen to like the genre.
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