Player Piano

Player Piano tells the story of a man named Paul Proteus. He lives sometime in the not-too-distant future in the United States, in the aftermath of a grand world war which has given birth to a massive mechanization of the entire country. His father pioneered the birth of the society and he is following in his father's footsteps as a major manager of a plant in Ilium: futuristic New York. He becomes more and more dissatisfied with what turns out to be their very unfair and unfulfilling new way of life, and finally drops his former life as a plant manager to take part in a revolution against the authority. He is swept along with the events of their rebellion entirely out of his control, and at the end of the novel, they appear to be successful in disshelving the machines- but with the dreary reminder that they will always eventually return, and history will come full circle once more.