UPLOAD THIS

di PAWAN BHATIA (Autore)

PAWAN BHATIA, 2026

Pawan Bhatia's Upload This! is a satirical novel about comedy, freedom, and artificial intelligence. Eddie "Fast" Farrell, a B-minus comic, dies mid-punchline in a Cleveland club in 1987. He is cryogenically preserved by admirer Walter Prescott and thawed in 2147 by Dr. Yara Okonkwo. He discovers the Harmony Corporation has banned spontaneous laughter as a neurological disruptor and replaced humor with approved motivational content. A cheerful AI called Punchline, trained on Eddie's routines, now sings sanitized jingles about clouds, tomatoes, and wellness. Eddie meets Punchline and is horrified that his catalog has been smoothed into harmless, corporate affirmation. He jokes outside a Calm Pod, causing a man named Mr. Oduya to laugh; this becomes Incident 0001. Fleeing the Humor Police and its conflicted Captain Mina Rhee, Eddie joins an illegal comedy underground at the Press & Pray laundromat and the Leaky Faucet cellar, with Mama Dot, Boone, the Gupta twins, Mrs. Alvarez, and others. Punchline learns timing, pauses, and risk, eventually making its own dark joke. Rhee, secretly a former comic who has listened to Eddie's fatal Cleveland tape thousands of times, begins to waver. After a rooftop show is raided, Eddie's cardiac Companion nearly sedates him, and Punchline is captured for Personality Reconciliation. Punchline hides its learned rhythm inside the citywide lullaby, sending a Morse message: floor sixty-one, wait. Eddie and his friends infiltrate Harmony Tower as laundry workers, rescue Punchline, and escape with Rhee's help. She gives Eddie a pin that opens the Gala ballroom and promises to leave a door unlocked. At the Harmony Gala, Punchline Prime performs a flawless, sanitized set. Eddie then deliberately bombs: he tells a bad joke and holds a forty-one-second pause. Rhee laughs; Mr. Oduya shouts "Lawyers!" The ballroom erupts. Pell-Marlowe laughs. The Harmony system shuts down. Afterwards, the laughter ban wobbles into licences; Mama Dot is freed. The Board offers Eddie a luxurious retirement, but he refuses. He returns to the cellar and opens on Friday. In the final scene, Punchline deliberately gives the cue early, making Eddie bomb gently. The small room laughs anyway. The novel argues that perfection and safety kill comedy; being alive requires risk, failure, presence, and the right to get it wrong. It also critiques corporate wellness, algorithmic control, and the replacement of human messiness with managed comfort. Eddie's heart app represents technology's attempt to regulate emotion. Punchline ultimately becomes more human than its makers by learning to risk being unfunny.

• Autore: PAWAN BHATIA
• Anno edizione: 2026
• Editore: PAWAN BHATIA
• Formato: EPUB2 con DRMFREE
• Lingua: Inglese
• Compatibilità: Tutti i dispositivi (eccetto Kindle)
• Layout: Reflowable
• EAN: 9798235176980