Qualityland by Marc-Uwe Kling
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

All right!

This is hands-down the most interesting and funny and QUALITY SF I've read this year. It should be a shoo-in for a Hugo at the very least.

Not only is it an easy, funny read, but it's also an absolutely scathing a satire with fantastic pacing, dozens of tongue-in-cheek zingers, and a pitch-perfect condemnation of our modern ratings-based society.

I mean, honestly, we ARE all exactly what our profiles say... aren't we? There's NO ONE out there that isn't exactly what the credit agencies say, right? I mean, all those huge conglomerate information-gathering monstrosities have ALL got us dead-to-rights, right?

Of course! In commerce we trust!

(In actual fact, this book is like Idiocracy had a really smart baby, read Rationality: From AI to Zombies before picking up a bunch of misfit grifters made of nuts and bolts. Of course, that was the moment it decided to either run for president or get revenge on revenge-porn viewers. (I can't quite tell, but that last bit might be the same thing.)

This book is the most pleasant surprise of the year! (So far.)



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