The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century

This was simply too abstract for me to enjoy it. On top of that everything was held at an arm's length from the reader so I couldn't even try to feel invested in anything. It's typical sci-fi ponderings of what it means to be human, done in a somewhat interesting way but that's where the interest ended for me.

We've all read books that we couldn't put down, this is one of those books. Well, it might be. It's only 133 pages, so I didn't really have a chance to put it down. Days later, I'm still not sure what to make of this book, it's been very hard to tell what it was trying to say. It's alien, non-conforming, and obtuse. I would normally say, “I loved it,” at this point, but I didn't; this might just be me failing to digest the book, but it seemed to be confusing on purpose. I'll give a bit more of the context that helped to explain some of the artistic choices in this book, but I should make it clear that I definitely see this book primarily as art as opposed to entertainment (my thinking being, all entertainment is art but, not all art is entertainment).

I classify The Employees as an experimental SF art novel. This book is framed as a series of non-linear interview statements with the crew of the Six-Thousand Ship. The ship is corporate owned and orbits around the planet of “New Discovery”; its crew are a mix of humans and humanoid robot/AI constructs. In advance of the story, the ship's crew discover a series of Objects on New Discovery, which they collect and place aboard the ship for study and care. The Objects are truly bizarre and possibly alive, they emit aromas or some type of aura that begin to affect both the human and humanoid crew alike. We are reading their statements to the corporate representatives onboard the ship.

Before I go further, I think it's important to note that this book was conceived as a companion piece to a contemporary art installation. The objects in the story are meant to correspond to the objects in the installation. The installation itself, Consumed Future Spewed Up As Present, is a commentary on form, presence, and the body. That tracks with me. The Employees struck me in part as an exploration of the difference between a human being and a thing; the objects fill the role of metaphors for the variety in the human form. In both works, the objects, their presentation and accessories serve to define different facets of the human form as well as the ways in which visual/sociological context can at times alter the perception of those facets. The statement ultimately amounting to: Humans come in all shapes and sizes and modes of dress and modifications- the definition is not fixed to body or form.

Beyond those themes, The Employees is also a workplace satire. If the title didn't give it away this is a workplace novel, and like the narration at the start points out, the testimonials we are reading have been collected in the interest of, “reduction or enhancement of performance, task-related understanding, and the acquisition of new knowledge and skills.” There's a hierarchy between the humans and humanoids that exists but is not defined, and there is tension and envy that builds between them as the novel goes on. But there's a third group, faceless and cold, and that's the representative(s) that are taking these statements: Management. The satire is in the form, as the employees make increasingly more emotional statements, the focus and presentation does not shift at all, nothing changes regardless of what the employees say (This clicked immediately as a corpo drone myself). The employees are secondary to the stated corporate interest, and the more you read, the clearer this aspect becomes as more and more of the story is cut out of the statements.

So yeah, this book is mad artsy, and sometimes you sacrifice for your art. I think that's the case here because the narrative forms around the Objects; what the book gains in the context and grounding of the installation, it loses in out on in its standalone form. I imagine it's quite rare for a book like this to break out on its own, and it's a testament to how well written this piece is that it manages to escape the orbit of its artistic roots despite not being a traditional novel. Divorced from the art, this book has its own anxious and looming energy, we don't often know who is speaking or what the text is speaking on. Ravn is stingy with the delivery of the plot details: there are stirrings of a revolt, the absence of (what I surmise to be) the chief scientist, and some type of corporate tribunal is occurring far in the background. Working within the testimonial format, it's actually very impressive that we get so much characterization and plot and imagery without any heavy lifting from the narration/narrator/thematic framework.

What this book amounted to was a series of eerie visuals that give the distinct sense that something has been obscured or censored from the reader. This is the magic of the book, it appears hollow on first inspection, but the further you go, the more obvious it becomes that something is excising anything not related to the Objects and worker efficiency. What are the add-ons that some humans wear? What about the child holograms, what on earth are those? What became of the chief scientist? There's something stifling about how precise this novel is with its visual focus, and how purposeful it is with obscuring the rest. So yes, this novel works, and it's kind of incredible exactly how it works, it's so cool to me that you can tell a story by not telling a story. But it's not really all that fun of a read because of how much is obscured from the reader, I'm all for a puzzle, but I'm not going to solve the Riemann Hypothesis just for fun.

TL;DR: This is one artsy book.

Hmm. This is another book where the wealth of 5 star reviews leaves me bemused. I strongly suspect that how you react to this book is influenced to how you react to modern art installations (since this book is apparently inspired by one).

For me, each chapter was more like a hint - admittedly an often well written and poetic hint - of what transpired. The actual heavy lifting of visualizing and understanding the story is left entirely as an exercise for the reader. This doesn't work for me; I need something more to grab onto.

If you're the kind of person who can look at an abstract object and gain deep emotional insights from that experience, this is probably just the book for you. If you require a bit more of a framework for your experiences, I suspect, like me, you will struggle.

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.

Haven't read anything like this before but it accomplishes so much in so few pages. Definitely an odd structure as most of the statements are at most a page and contain only brief musings from one of the employees. Love the idea of extraterrestrial objects possessing some kind of sentience or otherworldly qualities that can't be understood. Something about it feels more alien than most visions of alien life are.

Absolutely fascinating story. The author's ability to inject such emotion and awareness into the characters, especially in the format, is fascinating.

The story unfolds as if you're reviewing transcripts from interviews; in some ways not too dissimilar to Bram Stoker's Dracula (a story told through journal entries).

For me, there are way too many unanswered questions, and my imagination is going too wild, which is why I've limited by review to 3/5. For others, this could easily be a 5/5.

Fantastic story, glad to have read it.