employees a workplace novel of the 22nd century

Ravn’s grounding in poetry is blissfully apparent as she is able to construct an abstract and gripping narrative without use of exposition or any text outside the responses, all marvelously rendered into English here by Martin Aitken. Le Guin, Ravn presents this riotously ponderous novel as an HR pamphlet of interviews conducted with the crew. Inspired by an art installation by Lea Guldditte Hestelund, ‘Consumed Future Spewed Up as Present’, as well as the ideas of Ursula K. In the quest for productivity and professionalism, what horrors have we unleashed and what paths to dehumanization have we opened up? Danish poet and writer Olga Ravn’s The Employees is a darkly comic tale full of existential dread about a team of humans and humanoids aboard a work spacecraft that not only examines the spiral towards dehumanization under a life governed by quotidian productivity metrics but also the ache towards humanity awakening in the non-human crew members. Wracked by all kinds of longing, The Employees probes into what it means to be human, emotionally and ontologically, while simultaneously delivering an overdue critique of a life governed by work and the logic of productivity. Structured as a series of witness statements compiled by a workplace commission, Ravn’s crackling prose is as chilling as it is moving, as exhilarating as it is foreboding. Gradually, the crew members come to see themselves in a new light, and each employee is compelled to ask themselves whether their work can carry on as before – and what it means to be truly alive. Our shared, far-away Earth, which now only persists in memory. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew is perplexed to find itself becoming deeply attached to them, and human and humanoid employees alike find themselves longing for the same things: warmth and intimacy.

Those who will die, and those who will not. The crew of the Six-Thousand ship consists of those who were born, and those who were created.

Employees a workplace novel of the 22nd century