As if we all haven’t been going through enough over the past 5 months, we had to have a hurricane leaving many of us without power for ….well let’s just say that as I am writing this, my house in Port Washington is still without power three days after the storm.e

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Of course I had just done a huge grocery shop after work on Monday.  Grocery shopping is in some way a form of therapy for me.  I like to hand pick my food and  you never know what’s available leading to a strategy that has gone from and  “buy what you need now” to “buy what they have that you think you’ll need down the line.”  .  Such is the new normal.

So on that note, I thought I would share two books I have recently read that describe a future world that might seem the perfect answer to our new normal.  Both are available on Libby and in physical book form,

What if you received drone deliveries of items that you need as you think of them?  You cut your finger preparing dinner and bandages and antiseptic ointment are at your front door. Not so far off from the world of Amazon Prime.  Rob Hart’s novel, The Warehouse, takes place in the not too distant future where an Amazon-like company pretty much takes over the world.  Welcome to Cloud.

“Cloud isn’t just a place to work. It’s a place to live. And when you’re here, you’ll never want to leave.”

Our protagonist Paxton never thought he’d be working for Cloud, the giant tech company that’s eaten much of the American economy. Much less that he’d be moving into one of the company’s sprawling live-work facilities.

But compared to what’s left outside, Cloud’s bland chain store life of gleaming entertainment halls, open-plan offices, and vast warehouses…well, it doesn’t seem so bad. It’s more than anyone else is offering.

Zinnia never thought she’d be infiltrating Cloud. But now she’s undercover, inside the walls, risking it all to ferret out the company’s darkest secrets. And Paxton, with his ordinary little hopes and fears? He just might make the perfect pawn. If she can bear to sacrifice him.

As the truth about Cloud unfolds, Zinnia must gamble everything on a desperate scheme—one that risks both their lives, even as it forces Paxton to question everything about the world he’s so carefully assembled here.

Together, they’ll learn just how far the company will go…to make the world a better place.

Set in the confines of a corporate panopticon that’s at once brilliantly imagined and terrifyingly real, The Warehouse is a near-future thriller about what happens when Big Brother meets Big Business–and who will pay the ultimate price.“

And if that isn’t enough to make you stop and think, what about and AI (artificial intelligence) candidate running for president in the not too distant future?

That’s the world imagined by German author Marc-Uwe Kling’s Qualityland.

In the near future world of Qualityland, algorithms help create an idyllic life for its citizens, but what if the perfect world wasn’t built for you?

Welcome to QualityLand, the best country on Earth. Here, a universal ranking system determines the social advantages and career opportunities of every member of society. An automated matchmaking service knows the best partners for everyone and helps with the break up when your ideal match (frequently) changes. And the foolproof algorithms of the biggest, most successful company in the world, TheShop,(think again of Amazon on steroids) know what you want before you do and conveniently deliver to your doorstep before you even order it.
In QualityCity, Peter Jobless is a machine scrapper who can’t quite bring himself to destroy the imperfect machines sent his way, and has become the unwitting leader of a band of robotic misfits hidden in his home and workplace. One day, Peter receives a product from TheShop that he absolutely, positively knows he does not want, and which he decides, at great personal cost, to return. The only problem: doing so means proving the perfect algorithm of TheShop wrong, calling into question the very foundations of QualityLand itself.
Qualityland, Marc-Uwe Kling’s first book to be translated into English, is a brilliantly clever, illuminating satire in the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and George Orwell that offers a visionary, frightening, and all-too funny glimpse at a near future we may be hurtling toward faster than it’s at all comfortable to admit. So why delay any longer? TheShop already knows you’re going to love this book. You may as well head to the cash register, crack the covers, and see why that is for yourself.

Reviews courtesy of GoodReads and Google Books.

Send comments or suggestions to srappaport@manhassetlibrary.org