A Novel Workplace (2021)

Book Review from the September 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Employees: a Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century. By Olga Raven. Lolli £12.99. (Translated from Danish by Martin Aitken)

The workplace in question is a spaceship, with a crew of humans and humanoids, which has travelled far from Earth and is orbiting the planet New Discovery. Some peculiar objects from the planet have been taken onboard, objects with strange fragrances and which are given unofficial names, such as ‘the Gift’ and ‘the Half-Naked Bean’.

The novel begins with a statement by a committee that interviewed the employees, which is full of management-speak, such as how the impact of the mysterious objects ‘might be said to precipitate reduction or enhancement of performance’, so ‘illuminating their specific consequences for production’.

Gradually the reader discovers why the committee exists and what the reactions of the workers have been. This applies to both humans and humanoids, and it is not always obvious to which category an individual belongs (‘Does it say in your files what I am?’, asks one interviewee). One humanoid says they were ‘made for work’, and cannot understand how a human could be more than their work, yet a human says their job means everything to them. One human misses shopping back on Earth, while another wants to hold a child in their arms again, and a third is grateful for being able to spend time with a hologram of their son. One humanoid feels sad, and one human prefers to spend time with the humanoids. Another interviewee (human? humanoid?) begins to feel disloyal towards the organisation behind the voyage: ‘it pains me because there’s no place for me other than inside the organisation’.

A central theme of the book, then, is the role and importance of work in a person’s life, in a setting where it seems there is little else to do other than work. Humans and humanoids become harder to distinguish, even though they stop talking to each other. One worker notes that it takes twenty years to produce a capable human employee, and a lot can ‘go wrong’ in that time, whereas it takes just two years to produce a humanoid worker. Humanoid bodies are more valuable than human ones, being more durable and open to software updates.

The organisation’s board of directors is primarily concerned to preserve the ship and its cargo, especially the weird objects, and it turns out that the directors are themselves humanoid, though this was not conveyed to the human crew, as they would be likely to react more positively to fellow humans.

All in all, an interesting if difficult reflection on such topics as the role of work, what makes someone human, what activities other than work are needed. Not a socialist science fiction novel, but one with noteworthy comments on some aspects of capitalism (even though that word is not used).

Paul Bennett