Book review "Der Drohnenpilot"
How computer games recruit killers
I’m sure you have heard of drones. They make it easy to shoot area shots for budget films and are fun to play around with, but they have also a dark side, which you can read about in “The drone pilot” by Thorsten Nesch.
The German dystopian science fiction novel from 2015 is about a 17 years old teenager who is called Darius and is unemployed. Since New Year he has a girlfriend, called Evelyn. In his free-time, he plays the computer game “Raid” which leads him to a job interview as a drone pilot with a QR-Code. After the interview, he signs the contract. At that moment he doesn’t know how his life as a drone pilot will affect his whole life, including his relationship to his father and his girlfriend. What could this mean for the future?
Sadly the first chapters are pretty boring because the award-winning author introduces the whole story in detail. Later, when Darius accepts the occupation, the story takes on speed and gets quite interesting. In my opinion, the book shows in a quite impressive way which consequences armed drones can have on our society and it makes you think about it. From my point it’s important to mention that the book has to some extent an open ending.
To put it in the nutshell the German novel has some downsides like the beginning or for me the open ending but, on the other hand, it's accuract and tells in detail about a future with drones which are already in use. That’s why I recommend this book to German readers.