The Employees

Das Buch fängt langsam an und hat mich anfangs nicht wirklich begeistert. Erzählt wird die Geschichte eines Sechstausender-Schiffs, eines Raumschiffs unterwegs auf einer Pioniermission zu einem Planeten in einem anderen Sonnensystem.

Um diese Reise und auch folgende überhaupt hinzubekommen, besteht die Besatzung aus Menschen und Humanoiden, Bots, die teils organisch, teils mechanisch sind. Um sie alle zu managen und daraus zu lernen, gibt es eine Arbeitskommission, die Gespräche mit allen führt und den Zustand dieser autarken Gesellschaft überwacht. Protokolle dieser Gespräche zwischen Menschen oder Humanoiden und der Arbeitskommission lesen wir, unordentlich sortiert und nur in Teilen vorgelegt.

Wie wir erfahren, läuft das anfangs alles gut. Man kommt an, besucht den Planeten, bringt einige Gegenstände oder Artefakte mit, stellt diese aus. Alle Beteiligten, egal ob Mensch oder halbe Maschine, fangen an zu träumen und werden ihrer Arbeit und ihrer Mission überdrüssig.

Es gibt eine Revolte. Man greift zu extremen Mitteln. Trotz allem gibt es weiterhin Liebe zwischen Menschen, zwischen Menschen und Maschinen und zwischen Menschen und Maschinen und ihren echten oder eingepflanzten oder halluzinierten Geistern aus ihrer Vergangenheit.

Und auf einmal ist das Buch packend, spannend, philosophisch, unterhaltsam, erkenntnisreich. Es regt zum Nachdenken an. Es zeigt einen Weg, aus einer Collage von Einzelblickpunkten das Gefühl einer Gruppe wieder zu geben, was eine Art zu schreiben ist, die mir selber schon glückte. Ist dies vielleicht das SciFi-Buch, das mir selber meinen Weg als Autor zeigt?

I read Olga Ravn's The Employees ("A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century"), and this book sure has some attributes.

The format of this book is ~entirely in disjointed and anonymous (confessional?/professional)? statements to an off-page undescribed committee.

Statement 015 I'm very happy with my add-on. I think you should let more of us have one. It's me and yet it's not me. I've had to change completely in order to assimilate this new part, which you say is also me.

Statement 011 The fragrance in the room has four hearts. None of these hearts is human, and that's why I'm drawn toward them. At the base of this fragrance is soil and oakmoss, incense, and the smell of an insect captured in amber.

I've included two partial statements here for flavor from adjacent pages, because this is the only way I feel like I can convey the Annihilation-esque vibes of this book.

The book opens with a preface that these statements are to help improve future workflows and prevent future deviation(!). There's a lot of creepy workplace language of productivity and add-ons and forced updates, but the book itself dwells more on employees struggling with uncertainty about what it means to be a human or a constructed humanoid.

I am still not sure what I think about this, but I am glad to have read it.

STATEMENT 084

"...I dream that there are hundreds of black seeds in my skin, and when I scratch at them they get caught under my nails like fish eggs. Then, with a popping sound, new ones appear where I scratched the other ones away. I feel that this has something to do with the objects in the rooms, but I don't know how. There's something about their smoothness in relation to my skin...I got the impression that one of the objects wanted to take my skin away from me..."

The Employees is a short novel comprised of numbered interviews with "Employees" of the Six-Thousand ship, an exploration vessel whose full purpose is mostly unknown, but one of its functions is to house some strange objects that are recovered from an unknown place. Through the interviews with the employees, we get a vague idea of these mysterious objects which may or not be alive. However we quickly learn about some of the tensions among the crew as some of them are humans (from earth) and some are "humanoid" or constructed humans, designed to not age and whose consciousness can be uploaded and downloaded. There seems to be a schism rising between these two groups of employees that comes to a dangerous head.

What a fascinating little implication of a story. I loved the interview format that seemed to swing between sometimes quirky, sometimes horrific little anecdotes, and insight into the status of the mission and life on the Six-Thousand ship. It hints at much larger goings on, but the author keeps the reader just out of reach of the full context. Some of the interviews can feel a bit silly or out of place, but all of them together created a really interesting narrative. This is very short, so you really have nothing to lose by picking it up!

A frustratingly vague but often haunting epistolary short story. I wasn't anticipating it to hew so closely to videogame emails and SCP entries, but I'll give it credit for being thematically richer than most of the shockbait horror it structurally parallels.

Ideas about the bodies of dehumanized (in more ways than one) workers in a future capitalist state are woven in without the didactic brutality so much contemporary scifi relies on. Characters cannot see outside the demands of the company anymore than readers can materialize the absent interviewer. Both are invisible absolutes, acknowledged but dismissed because who has time when you're working 12 hour shifts (to say nothing or the cosmic horror leaking from this cargo...).

I felt rather listless by the end of this. Even with the introduction of an honest to god plot in the third act it retains the abstract, nonlinear structure (it was not surprising to learn the author is primarily a poet). Certain passages were striking enough to overcome the otherwise formless collage of interviews, but I am glad it was only a scarce 125 pages.