The Employees is a short read. It can be finished in no more than a couple hours. It is only 100 pages, and most of those pages are not even filled. Yet, The Employees by Olga Ravn is one of the most engaging books I have read in several months. The synopsis on the back cover markets the book as the “workplace novel of the 22nd century”, a promise that is certainly fulfilled by the text. Indeed, it is a post-modern take on the Lovecraftian epistolary format.
spoilers ahead
Mysterious objects that ooze gold liquid, vague references to human “add-ons” that allude to a sexual nature, and strange obsessions with “biodraperies” lend an air of techno-magic into the world. The story itself takes the form of a series of interviews with the crew of the Six-Thousand Ship, a vessel colonizing a new planet, where they find alien objects that horrify and bewilder the characters.
One can feel the Dutch heritage of the novel, (novella?) as each of Ravn’s words feels engineered to absorb the reader into the daily mundanities and amazements of what is a dystopic world. Many words have already been written about the parental, trans-humanist, and anti-capitalist themes of the text. Each of these themes, though, revolves around the central theme of control. Control over selfhood, humanity, technology, desire, capital, and death itself. In this way, The Employees exemplifies the Cybernetic Novel.
The crew of the Six-Thousand Ship are all controlled by a “workflow”, those employees who were born to humans, rather than made by humans, submit themselves to the workflow at the threat of termination by the corporation. At the same time, the “made” humans are controlled by a “program”, limiting their will and freedom. The alien “objects” discovered by the crew on the planet New Discovery further this purpose, they are used as punishments and rewards, using the profound psychological effects of the objects to advance the mission of the ship.
One would be remiss in this psycho-sexual analysis of the text to avoid speaking of the sexless humanoids that were created by the corporation. One of the vignettes most present in my mind is that of a crew member who seems to have fallen in love with a humanoid woman. A made woman, rather than a born woman. He struggles with the meaning of this attraction. With this idea of the “made woman”, with the crew member struggling to reconcile his emotions towards the woman, it becomes impossible to ignore the gendered realities of this text. A made woman with false sex, engaging with a man who is struggling with the psycho-sexual reality of this attraction. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to tease out the thread.
The end of the text, an audio log of the last few crew after members a radiation blast has killed the rest, evokes defiance, even in death. In a twilight between life and death, thoroughly degraded by intense radiation, the humanoids prove their humanity. They seek to die in the air of this unknown planet, grasping the grass beneath them as they expire. At least these moments will not be lost. The thoughts of these people will not die with them. People will know they existed. That they exist.
I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
– Blade Runner, Roy Batty