#olga ravn

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 22 - The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century

This was a fascinating book. Another one I probably appreciate as an art object more than as a story, per se, but in this case that’s not really a knock on it. Or at least, I believe the whole project began as the written accompaniment to an actual visual art display. Which I really rather wish I could have seen, it seems like the right sort of setting and accompaniment would have made this a lot more affecting.

Anyway, the basic synopsis of the book is that, sometime in the future, a massive space vessel called the Six Thousand Ship is launched from Earth and ends up in orbit over an alien world, where strange and vaguely eldritch objects are retrieved and brought on board. The story is told through a series of anonymous employee testimonials to some silent and anonymous survey/study/HR board. Crucially, some large fraction of the crew is not human but humanoid, synthetic workers created and programmed by the organization who own the ship.

The entire thing is perfectly designed to convey a very particular sense of corporate alienation, right down to the polite euphemisms used for murder. Especially at the beginning, everything from obsession to grief and nostalgia over never seeing Earth again is always framed as how it might effect ones productiveness as an employee, and to figure out everything that really happened in any given statement you usually have to first decipher the thick layer of corporate HR-ese its buried under. The packaging provides a sort of antiseptic distance that kind of clashes interestingly with what is actually happening at any given point.

Which is, I’m sue, all making a point of the alienation and inhumanity of the modern workplace and the absolute horror of a life that is nothing but work – I think I first heard this book mentioned in the context of people discussing Severance, and I can absolutely see the relation between the two. I’m sure it’s incredibly uncultured of me, but the whole framing device (especially as things moved towards the climax) also just seemed incredibly reminiscent of the audio logs and scraps of text you would find in a video game, providing the backstory of how whatever environment you’re exploring collapsed into the ruined state you found it in. Which is, certainly, an interesting effect to go for in a book.

The objects themselves are almost certainly weighted with deep symbolic meaning that flew entirely over my head, but the effect they had on the various employees is definitely interesting. Things definitely do happen, but in terms of page count the inner musings and angst over the human(oid) condition and how interaction with the objects effects different individual psychologies is what the book is actually really interested is. Being allowed to care for the objects in the way they seem to like becomes an intense preoccupation for some of the crew involved, even moreso than the allocated time with holographic recreations of children the organization starts providing as an incentive at a certain point.

I’m not entirely sure it really does anything with it, but all the ways the book gestures at transhumanism is at least interesting. The humanoids themselves, with their probably immortality and regular mental reuploads and lack of anything outside the Work to contextualize or complicate their life (at least until the objects show up), as well as plenty of mentions of add-ons that the Organization provides its human workers as needed. And just very oblique mentions of ‘transfers’ to positions with very different mental architecture or sense of self or physical/mental autonomy. It’s all a great/creepy vibe, at least.

On the whole book left me slightly cold, but that’s really a me problem more than the book problem. Short enough to be worth a read if it seems interesting, at least.

[zielenna]

I have never not been employed. I was made for work. I never had a childhood either, though I've tried to imagine one. My human coworker sometimes talks about not wanting to work, and then he'll say something quite odd and rather silly. What is it he says, now? There's more to a person than the work they do, or A person is more than just their work? Something like that. But what else could person be? Where would your food come from? Who would keep you company? How would you get by without work and without coworker? Would you be left standing in a cupboard?

Olga Ravn, The Employees, transl. Martin Aitken

[beljar]

A feeling, a sense of attachment? Do you know? Has it got a name? What do you call it? Is it normal? Should I be worried?

I’ve got nothing against death. Nothing against rotting away. What frightens me is what doesn’t die and never changes form.

I like to be in the room. I find it very erotic. The suspended object, I recognise my gender in it.. Every time I look at the object, I can feel my sex between my legs and between my lips. I become moist, regardless of whether I’ve got anything there or not.

The fragrance in the room has will and intention. It’s the smell of something old and decomposing, something musty. It’s as if the smell wishes to initiate the same process in me: that I become a branch to break off, rot and be gone.

You want to know why I like the incinerator? It’s the smell of burnt matter, it reminds me of mealtimes at home. The smell of meat and soil and blood. It smells of the birth of my daughter. It smells of Planet Earth.

Olga Ravn, from The Employees: A workplace Novel of the 22nd Century, [Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken]

[albertserra]

The Employees by Olga Ravn, trans. Martin Aitken

[lastfinalgirls]

Every book I read in 2023

The Employees by Olga Ravn

★★★★ / 5

[fluoresensitive]

"I may have been made, but now I'm making myself."

The Employees, Olga Ravn (trans. Martin Aitkin)

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Book Haul: May Edition! My indie bookstore purchases started to show up this month, and it was my birthday, and I asked for books!! My ~Driscoll Vibes~ TBR has been replenished for sure (and just in time, too).

[infinitaregna]

Reviews (Books): The Employees by Olga Ravn (2020)

A disjointed and nondescript series of interviews documenting the events leading up to the breakdown of order aboard a corporate-run space vessel may be an intriguing and diverting story for some. It's likely others will find it to be an inscrutably abstract and confounding narrative.

Either way, The Employees, coming in at just under 130 pages and composed of "chapters" that are often just a paragraph or two in length, is a fairly digestible novel even when considering the rather cryptic story-telling devices employed by the author.

Whether you will find this work to be a unique and engrossing 'puzzle-box', or a maddeningly impenetrable mess, well, that's between you and your sci-fi gods.

Personally, I enjoyed the book as more of a novelty than anything else - the marriage of a bona fide sci-fi tale to an unconventional narrative structure. However, in the end, I never really felt like I connected with the material in any meaningful sort of way. Again, the short length helped in this regard. But, ultimately, the book left too much unexplained for me to feel all that engaged with the actual story, to such a degree that the narrative structure seemed to work, to a large extent, at cross purposes with the story it was telling.

[wishblown]

The Great Question before us is: Are we doomed? The Great Question before us is: Will the Past release us? The Great Question before us is: Can we Change? In Time? And we all desire that Change will come.

— Tony Kushner; Angels in America

March Reads!

Closer Baby Closer by Savannah Brown — 5/5: Sav Brown you did it again <3 def my most anticipated release of the year (preordered a signed copy last year hehe) and it did not disappoint! not sure if it's better than Sweetdark but why pit them against each other??? Brown is a genius, a miracle worker, the one whose poetry I always send to my gf (ty sm for Sex poem), she truly is for the lovers, the no longer lovers, the longers, and for anyone looking up at the stars and feeling horny. will re-read this so so so many times just like Sweetdark

On Photography by Susan Sontag — 4.5/5: ‘must read’ for anyone who’s interested in photography even the least bit!!!! besides Sontag’s writing just generally being incredible, this is just such a good source on the complex history of the art and ‘non-art’ (!) of photography and what it does to both the photographers and their subjects. informative and never boring.

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides — 4/5: has anything ever depicted the male gaze better fr; just a group a boys romanticising and stalking a group of sisters who’re in a desperate situation and grieving the death of their sister to the point they cannot even help them bc they’re so obsessed with the fantasy world they’ve created for these girls and themselves in their minds, just men being men </3

The Employees by Olga Ravn — 3.5/5: this one was different! not your usual scifi I suppose. I enjoyed the style of the logged interviews of the different crew members that slowly revealed the plot yet never fully and also let you see some personality and reoccurring characters even though they were anonymous. compelling story and questions asked — who’s human? what’s human? can you become human? what do you gain, what do you lose? — in a somewhat new light

Der Richter und sein Henker (The Judge and His Hangman) by Friedrich Dürrenmatt — 3.5/5: I’m a Dürrenmatt girl I have to admit :/ this one wasn’t my favourite of his (not as much depth to the story perhaps?) but still very enjoyable and a typical Dürrenmatt plot twist and character types

Angels in America by Tony Kushner — 5/5: absolutely incredible. if you haven’t read this, please please do. beautiful writing, great characters, great insight into lgbt history. looking into seeing this actually played on stage now.

[oneshortdamnfuse]

From: The Employee s by Olga Ravn

This entry hit me like a freight train.

[romdocitizen]

- olga ravn, the employees

[somebirdortheother]

Hii my cult babe, have you read The Employees by Olga Ravn?

OMG!

I have not but it’s literally on my read list! I’ve been so excited ever since the English translation became available! Tell me all about it! Do you love it?

[nvllandv0id]

[beljar]

All the pores of my skin are wide open, and I see that in each one of them there’s a tiny stone. I feel I can’t recognise myself. I scratch and scratch at my skin until it bleeds.

Olga Ravn, from The Employees: A workplace Novel of the 22nd Century, (statement 006) [Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken]

[albertserra]

The Employees by Olga Ravn, trans. Martin Aitken

[haveyoureadthisscifibook]

vote YES if you have finished the entire book.

vote NO if you have not finished the entire book.

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