Happiness or freedom, which would you choose?
Summary
Levin tells a story about a community known as “the family” which is comprised of a group of members who are sedated and regulated by a computer known as “uni”. Uni knows all, plans all, and grants from each according to his ability to each according to his need. One member starts having doubts about the entire enterprise.
Thoughts
It is hard to judge books like this one in the year of our lord 2023, as so much of what we now read and see draw their inspiration from seminal works such as this one. A side effect of this is that when read in the present the story feels redundant, is this Levin’s fault or a consequence of passing time? This book at a surface level has some obvious critiques against Communism and in our times against the encroachment of AI into public decision making. The message of the book did seem at times to be too transparent, too in the readers face, damaging the experience for me. On a deeper level this book asks us what it is we are striving for? This is actually a very interesting question especially in terms of equality. We strive to create a world where everyone is treated the same, but is that possible when people are so diverse? Will we need to sacrifice individuality for equality? To me this is still an open question, and thanks to my recent reading of Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents I find it hard not to see the hand of Eros in this movement towards oneness. Another takeaway from this book was that of further critiquing Utopia’s in general. The main character Chip agrees with Dostoyevsky’s underground man, Utopias are inhuman because they are not built for humans, but for machines. They are built for things that always act according to rules that are tabulated in cold sterile databanks. In order for humans to act in this way they must forfeit the thing that makes them human.
I found the dialogue throughout to be fairly well done. Although by the end I was ready to never read the expletives “brother fighter” or “Christ and Wei” ever again. The story kept up a good clip and was entertaining, but as I said before, probably not as mind blowing to a modern reader as it would have been upon initial publication. One thing that was mind blowing to the modern reader was a rape scene that comes out of nowhere. You are cruising along in the story when all of the sudden you start to get a little creeped out by the main character and like a slow-moving train wreck the worn-out John Wayne “She said no because you haven’t kissed her hard enough” walks out onto the stage. So there’s that.
Overall, I would not say this is a must read, but I’ve definitely read better books. I was looking forward to reading my first Ira Levin book, and I hope his others are better.