Cherrypicker | Literature  Death Was Not Ordered

Delivery services in the future will simply deliver everything – almost at the speed of light. Even though the desired item does not even exist at the time of ordering. But only the fastest earns money. There is no room for scruples.

Tom Hillenbrand, journalist and SPIEGEL bestselling author, presents a science fiction satire with his latest work Lieferdienst (Delivery Service), whose humour and dystopian absurdities are captivating. The story takes place in New Berlin, which the locals call “Beezwee” in Berlin dialect, i.e. B2.

Arkadi Schneider, a likeable late twenty-something, university dropout and armed to the teeth “bringer” in the service of the Rio courier company, has a declared goal: he wants to make it to the top of the company's internal ranking system as a “box runner”. And he wouldn't mind having a girlfriend again. One day, a colleague asks him to take on one of his jobs. Arkadi agrees – and from then on, events come thick and fast. The colleague dies, Arkadi has to carry out special assignments and his bosses keep a close eye on him. Will the mysterious delivery reach its destination or will Arkadi be snatched out of the air by the competitors’ drones?

Effectiveness Comes First

Arkadi's employer is in fierce competition with three other large delivery services. All of them are ruthless and only interested in delivering goods quickly and successfully. In Arkadi's world, no time is wasted. Delivery is everything, as quickly as possible, always in line with the company motto: “Delivering awesome” – and “yesterday”.

Every single order placed by a consumer is freshly produced by several delivery services in a “maker”, a 3D printer. Whether it's a pair of shoes, toothpaste or a household appliance – no matter what, the desired product is created in just a few minutes. And this happens several times, even though the customer only needs it once.

Waste? Nobody Cares

The service that delivers what you want first is the winner in this battle. “The maker does it, the bringer brings it.” – That's how it will work in the future. If you're late, you've produced for nothing and the product ends up multiple times ... yes, where actually?

In the future, people will live in “silos” or actually live as they used to. But there are also “Mobilniks0148 who live in their vehicles. They can also be delivered there – a drop box is located on the roofs of the vehicles and deliveries are made from the air from high-speed hoverboards that dominate the skies above New Berlin.

Far Away From Reality?

Tom Hillenbrand's dystopia about a dead delivery man makes you shudder and laugh at the same time. And it makes you think: are some negative utopias perhaps not an exaggeration after all? Where do our returns end up these days? In any case, the book fits in with our global waste problems, the misery of our deserted city centres and consumer madness.

Wonder and speculation are allowed with this slim thriller. But how quickly can the present catch up with a sci-fi novel? With “Willow”, the new quantum chip in Google's quantum computer unveiled in December 2024, a calculation task could be solved in five minutes that would have taken a current supercomputer ten quadrillion years. Perhaps we will soon no longer be surprised by hoverboard deliveries at 300 km/h?

An Entertaining Vision of the Future

In the course of the entertaining story, which takes place in a world full of Hunter-Seeker drones, visors, laser scanners and other fantastic things, Tom Hillenbrand actually manages to make delivery by hoverboard look “as advanced as a horse and cart”. How? Please find out for yourself!

01/2025