Tik-Tok (Gateway Essentials)

Tik Tok is two ideas in one slim fast read:1 - Asimov's laws don't work (and never could).2 - People are idiots.Sladek launched his career in the SF New Wave of the sixties, and spent most of his time examining Robots and AI -- in fact in the mid-nineties he was a technical writer for a software firm. It could easily be argued that he wrote the same novel over and over -- and I should know, I've read all of them. So what. In a genre overflowing with techno-drivel and humourless prostulation, Sladek threw pies in the face of Science Fiction's sacred cows.And he threw them HARD. His parodies of other SF writers ("I Click As I Move" and "Carl Truhacker") were uncomfortably accurate pastiches of form and content.His masterpiece is "Roderick" (both books). But Tik Tok is still a great read, and he attacks fearlessly on all fronts: the nuclear family, conservatives, liberals, politics, scientists, intellectuals (in Sladek's universe they are not the same), and (most memorably) fast food.Sladek died in 2000, so he never lived the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfelt regime -- but he saw it coming. Tik Tok is masterful satire because it is so close to the truth, and far more prohetic than anything Asimov ever did.If you've never read Sladek, this is an excellent place to start.

I read Tic-Toc many years ago and thought it was one of the best pieces of satirical sci-fi I had ever read. Now I have my own copy.

One of those rare sci-fi novels, Tik-Tok is a perfect satire of robots and humans. Just like Animal Farm satirized farmers and livestock

I love this story because it's so twisted!!! It reminds me of an old novel about slavery but it's set in the future! Very creative and very devious! I loved it!

Perhaps the real future. . .

The title character is a 'domesticated robot' living in a time when most humans own at least one and sometimes more, using them as slaves; as he awaits jugement for crimes he perpetrated, he writes his memoirs. Sladek uses a lively back-and-forth structure that weaves together two main timelines. Tik-Tok, in platonic terms, is a 'liberated prisoner' among robots: unlike the others, he is aware of what went behind his construction and 'education', but rather than alerting the other robots, he is more interested in making various experiments to see how far he can go with this discovery. His actions speak less of a downright vengeance on his one-time human masters than of curiosity - hence his relative contempt for both humans (because of their lies and contradictions) and robots (for their incapacity to wake up and refuse passive submission). The conscience of his freedom liberates him from what humans have called 'Azimov circuits' (based on the three inhibitory laws formulated by Isaac Asimov), but these, as he remarks, could very well be illusions used to solidify human authority. There's a relentless cynicism, even nihilism running through the entire work, but it is mainly upsetting because it forces the reader to re-evaluate preconceptions about the world. Whether 'Tik-Tok' ultimately convinces us of its conclusions or not, the book is too powerful to ignore.

I had heard this book was an outrageously funny masterpiece of black humor, so finally, after many years I tracked it down at the library. While I discovered is a brief satire with a one joke premise that's diverting, but ages quickly. Told in 26 chapters-each of whose first word follows the sequence of the alphabet (Chapter 1, "As"; Chapter 2 "Broaching"; Chapter 3. "Culpritwise" and so on, at least until the final letters, where Sladek's gusto for this very little joke seems have run dry)-the story tells of a sociopathic robot in future America.Tik-Tok has "asimov circuits" which are supposed to keep him from harming humans, but somehow these aren't working, or as he suggests at one point, never really existed in the first place, but are part of some massive groupthink. The result is that Tik-Tok kills sadistically over the course of the book, all while building himself a corporate empire and manipulating social and political opinion so that robots are allowed to own property and vote. This is all fairly predictable from the beginning, but what I did find unexpectedly interesting are the parallels with Bret Easton Ellis' highly controversial novel American Psycho, which was written eight years later. In both, an outwardly impeccable character engages in nasty sadism, even tells other people what's he's done, only to have them think it's a joke.Mixed in with Tik-Tok's ascension are his reminisces of past owners, which are mostly played to comic effect, with a running commentary equating robots with slaves. Traditional caretakers of the moral status quo such as priests, judges, military, and aristocracy are repeatedly revealed to be charlatans, sadists, and just plain crazy. On the other end of the spectrum, the civil rights do-gooders of the "Wages For Robots" movement come under equal unsubtle satirical attack, as does the celebrity media industry. Capitalism itself, along with the military-industrial complex is further fodder for Sladek's acid pen. Ultimately, however, none of the satire is as subtle as I would have liked, and much of the book reads like an author riffing on familiar subjects. It's a nice addition to robot literature, but hardly the masterpiece it's made out to be.

Very well received gift

The best fictional book ever written, fell off my seat with laughter while reading it !

I enjoyed the story but the publisher has allowed far too many errors into the text, probably when scanning the printed version. These should have been picked up by the most basic proofreading, or even an automated spellcheck. "Wait till I" is rendered as "Waif111,""faces" as "laces", "order and" as "orderand", "office" as "ollice" (three times), etc etc ... The quality control is particularly poor towards the end of the book, distracting you from what should be a gripping conclusion.

I gave up on the kindle version around 50% through, the amount of typo's seemed to be increasing to the point where i couldn't understand the story. There are also large gaps in the text. Avoid this on the kindle and go with the paperback.