In Kurt Vonnegut's dystopian novel Player Piano, the engineer Paul Proteus has the first name Paul.
Paul Proteus is a talented manager in a society where machines have replaced most human workers. He is the manager of the Ilium Works and initially occupies a respected position within the automated industrial system. His growing doubts about that system lead him toward the resistance movement known as the Ghost Shirts.
The novel examines unemployment, technological control, social status, and the question of whether efficiency is enough to create a good society. Paul is not simply an outsider from the beginning; his position inside the machine-dominated order makes his eventual crisis especially important.
Player Piano was Vonnegut's first novel and was published in 1952. The title refers to a mechanical piano, an early symbol of technology performing what people once did themselves. It is sometimes described as an early American automation dystopia.