Corporate drone

Face it, our bodies are not terribly efficient. We risk injury darn near every time we try to do something, and our digestive and waste removal system is, uh, frankly, disgusting. If you’re an industrial engineer with a mild case of Asperger’s, as Dr. Charles Neumann seems to be, and you lose your leg in a work accident, as he does, and discover that the prosthetic device you’re fitted with—once you’ve made some design improvements—is quite superior to your biological leg, well, it makes sense to remove the remaining fleshy appendage and replace it with machinery. Max Barry’s Machine Man is another brilliant indictment of corporate capitalism—much like the wonderful Jennifer Government and sublime Company—but it’s also an examination of what, exactly, makes us human. His narrator, Neumann, makes perfect sense—right up until he doesn’t. How much of yourself would you give up in the name of durability and efficiency?