Player Piano takes place in a future reality in which machines have replaced the majority of human laborers in the United States. This automatization developed during a devastating war, when the country had to sustain production while workers went to battle. This meant engineers became the most important members of society—an elite reputation that remained even after the war. These days, everyone is required to take a test that determines the field they should go into and whether or not they’re intelligent enough to go to college. Anyone who doesn’t pass the test must either join the Army or a public works organization called the Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps. The people who do pass the test, on the other hand, mostly become managers and engineers, working at a large national company that is more powerful than the government.
The divide between college-educated engineers and everyone else is stark in Ilium, New York, where Doctor Paul Proteus lives with his wife, Anita. Paul is the manager of the Ilium Works, which means he’s the most powerful man in town. He and Anita live in a neighborhood full of other managers and engineers. Anyone who didn’t go to college lives in Homestead, a town on the other side of the Iroquois River. The two populations rarely interact.
Despite his success, Paul is unhappy. Anita is obsessed with his career and status, wanting him to advance through the company, but he feels drained by the corporate world. However, his mood picks up when his old friend, Ed Finnerty, comes to visit. He and Finnerty started at Ilium Works together 13 years ago, but Finnerty was promoted to a big job in Washington, D.C. Finnerty has never conformed to the boring corporate lifestyle—something Paul has always admired about him.
Finnerty tells Paul that he quit his job in Washington because he couldn’t stand it anymore. He clearly hopes Paul feels the same way, but Paul isn’t ready to admit his true feelings about the corporate world. Still, Finnerty’s discontent has a strong impact on him, rattling him before he leaves for a company dinner at the local Country Club, where he gives a speech about the importance of engineering. Anita is particularly invested in this speech, wanting it to go well because she hopes Paul will make a good impression on his bosses Kroner and Baer. Kroner, in particular, has high expectations for Paul, and Anita hopes Paul will use this to his advantage to get promoted.
Paul’s speech leads to a discussion in which Kroner praises the many benefits of mechanization. Toward the end of the evening, though, Finnerty arrives and drunkenly points out that automatization has actually harmed society by putting so many people out of work. Anita is devastated by this, hoping Finnerty’s words won’t ruin the evening and, in turn, destroy Paul’s chances of getting promoted to the position of manager at the Pittsburgh Works. But Finnerty isn’t the only person hurting Paul’s chances of promotion: Doctor Shepherd, Paul’s second-in-command, is eager to get the job himself, so he has been talking to Kroner and Baer about Paul’s unreliability. Much to Anita’s dismay, Paul hardly does anything to refute this, refusing to compete with Shepherd.
The day after the speech, Finnerty visits Ilium Works and wants to roam the grounds. It’s forbidden for unauthorized people to do this, but Paul orders the guards to let him in. When Shepherd hears about this, he calls Paul and strongly insinuates that he plans to tell Kroner, but Paul ignores him.
At a bar in Homestead that evening, Paul and Finnerty meet a man named James Lasher, a reverend in the Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps who also happens to have a master’s degree in anthropology. As they drink, Lasher insists that the stark societal divide will surely lead to some kind of revolution, arguing that a “Messiah” will emerge and lead the people of Homestead in a revolt against the elite upper class.
Finnerty is taken by this idea, finding Lasher deeply fascinating. Even Paul resonates with Lasher’s points, which help him see that machines have not only put people out of work, but—in doing so—have taken away their sense of self-worth and “dignity.” People like to feel as if they have a purpose in life, Lasher notes. Later, Paul gets so drunk that he stands on a table and yells that he will lead everyone to the middle of the bridge over the Iroquois River, promising to bring the two sides of Ilium together. But everyone just looks at him, and then he falls off the table and passes out. When Paul wakes up and goes to leave, Finnerty says he isn’t coming—he’ll be staying with Lasher.
The next day, Kroner invites Paul and Anita over for dinner. As Anita sits in the living room with Kroner’s wife, whom everyone calls Mom, Kroner takes Paul to his study. While showing Paul one of his many hunting rifles, Kroner says the Pittsburgh manager position has come down to two people: Paul and Fred Garth, the manager of the Buffalo Works. However, Kroner really thinks Paul’s the right one for the job. The only thing, he says, is that Paul has been making questionable decisions lately—like, for instance, letting Finnerty into the plant unsupervised. Another problem is that Paul’s government-issued gun was found on the banks of the river (because Finnerty stole it and later threw it in the river). This offense could lead to Paul’s arrest. As Paul tries to explain himself, Kroner waves him off, assuring him that he’s not overly concerned. In fact, he’d still like Paul to have the Pittsburgh job. All Paul has to do is become an informant, gathering information on shady characters like Finnerty and James Lasher. Before Paul can respond, Baer bursts in and congratulates him on the promotion, though Kroner says that nothing has been set in stone.
Paul decides to quit his job, since he can’t imagine betraying Finnerty. But he keeps this to himself for a while, wanting to slowly acclimate Anita to the idea of leading a different lifestyle. With this in mind, he secretly buys an old farm that has remained untouched by machinery, planning to become a farmer when he leaves the Ilium Works. Meanwhile, everyone around him prepares for the yearly corporate retreat to an island called the Meadows, where employees are grouped into teams that compete against each other in various sports. The whole idea of going to the Meadows exhausts Paul, but he has to feign enthusiasm because he has been named captain of the Blue Team—something that is, supposedly, an honor.
At the Meadows, Kroner and Paul sneak off to have a meeting with the most powerful man at the company, Doctor Gelhorne. Gelhorne says there’s a group called the Ghost Shirt Society that wants to dismantle the country’s use of machinery, effectively challenging everything the company stands for. Lasher and Finnerty belong to this society, and since Paul knows them, Gelhorne and Kroner want him to infiltrate the group as an informer. To make this believable, they’ll have to fire him; they’ve even started circulating rumors that he’s a “saboteur.” Paul tries to quit when they tell him this, but they think he’s just playing along with the plan. They also promise to promote him to manager of the Pittsburgh Works after he completes this assignment.
On his way off the island, Paul sees Anita and Shepherd in a romantic embrace. They’ve been having an affair, but Anita doesn’t feel remorseful. Instead of trying to cover up her infidelity, she accuses Paul of never actually caring for her, and though he refutes this, she doesn’t listen.
Back at home, Paul goes for a drink at the bar in Homestead, where the bartender knocks him out by slipping a drug into his whiskey. When he regains consciousness, he’s with Finnerty and Lasher, who tell him about the Ghost Shirt Society and its plan to destroy the country’s machinery. The goal is to restore a sense of purpose to the people who have been replaced by machines. More importantly, Paul will be the face of the revolution. He doesn’t have to do anything, though—his reputation will be enough to help the society recruit members. After agreeing to go along with this plan, Paul attends his first Ghost Shirt Society meeting and learns that the revolution will take place across the entire country, as multiple chapters of the society march against the machines.
Suddenly, police burst into the Ghost Shirt meeting. Paul tries to flee but gets arrested and thrown in jail. However, it’s not long before Kroner and Anita visit him, telling him that he’s done a wonderful job and that he’s getting promoted to Baer’s old job—Baer read a letter by the Ghost Shirt Society and thought it made some good points, so he left the company. Anita is thrilled and has decided to take Paul back. All Paul needs to do now is talk on the record about Lasher and Finnerty’s plans. But he refuses, choosing instead to stand trial as the head of the Ghost Shirt Society.
The Ghost Shirts begin their revolt during one of Paul’s court hearings, ultimately managing to break him free. They carry him into the chaos of the streets, where revolutionaries are busy destroying machines and upending the entire social order. They completely overtake Ilium, but the movement isn’t as successful in other cities throughout the country.
That evening, Paul and Finnerty survey the damage, which quickly got out of hand because the Ghost Shirts were too excited about breaking things. As the entire city shudders with the sound of far-off explosions, the police announce over loudspeakers that Ilium will be cut off from the rest of the country if the leaders of the movement—Paul, Lasher, Finnerty, and a professor named von Neumann—don’t turn themselves in. At first, Lasher and the others like the idea of living without machines, thinking of it as a way to demonstrate to the world that such a thing is possible. But when they see their fellow Ghost Shirts excitedly foraging through the broken machinery and trying to make it work again (seemingly just for the thrill of it), they realize that their little isolated society will inevitably rebuild itself, since it’s human nature to build, tinker, and work toward progress. With this in mind, they turn themselves in, feeling proud that they at least tried to upend an unjust system.
