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The Employees
Shortlisted for the International Booker prize, The Employees reshuffles a sci-fi voyage into a riotously original existential nightmare.
Funny and doom-drenched, The Employees chronicles the fate of the Six-Thousand Ship. The human and humanoid crew members complain about their daily tasks in a series of staff reports and memos. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew becomes strangely and deeply attached to them, even as tensions boil toward mutiny, especially among the humanoids.
Olga Ravn’s prose is chilling, crackling, exhilarating, and foreboding. The Employees probes into what makes us human, while delivering a hilariously stinging critique of life governed by the logic of productivity.
3 pages, Audible Audio
First published May 24, 2018
About the author
Olga Ravn
25 books795 followersOlga Sofia Ravn is a Danish poet and novelist. Initially she published poetry which was acclaimed by the critics, as was her first novel Celestine. She is also a translator and has worked as a literary critic for Politiken and several other Danish publications.
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January 20, 2025
‘This is not a human, but a coworker.’
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. Inspired by an art installation by Lea Guldditte Hestelund, ‘Consumed Future Spewed Up as Present’, as well as the ideas of Ursula K. Le Guin, Ravn presents this riotously ponderous novel as an HR pamphlet of interviews conducted with the crew. 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. The Employees is an imaginative workplace criticism that is as fantastical as it is deeply unsettling, invoking disquieting imagery&mdashl;particularly to those with tryphobia—in a world encompassed by corporate jargon and flattenend identities as Ravn asks us what it means to be human and will we appreciate it before it is too late.
Art installation by Lea Guldditte Hestelund
There is a certain charm to creating a workplace novel that reads like HR paperwork, and Ravn manages to craft a truly engaging and dynamic story within the confines of the style. It exists almost more like an art piece than a traditional novel, amplified by the book being an extension of Lea Guldditte Hestelund’s aforementioned art pieces as well as a references to Barbara Kruger’s art piece Untitled (It's a small world but not if you have to clean it). In effect, this book becomes a museum of ideas.
The latter calls attention to workers who seem invisible to the world while Hestelund’s exhibit uses imagery out of science fiction to examine the relationship between presence and body, both human and non-human. In The Employees the Six Thousand ship discovers curious ‘objects’ on a habitable planet and brings them aboard the ship for observation. We never learn much about the objects (though they are certainly influenced by the pieces in the installation and often described just like the ones shown hanging from the ceiling) but we do observe the effects they have upon the crew, both physically and psychologically.
‘To us, the objects are like an artificial postcard from Earth. To them, they’re a postcard from the future.’
While human crew begin to have strange dreams or break out in boils, the humanoid crew begin to have stirrings of feelings that seem outside their programming and become rather attached to the objects.
The central issue on the ship is always productivity. We see humanoids finding faults in the humans for their feelings getting in the way of work, yet also desiring to have feelings themselves. It becomes a rather bleak yet occasionally darkly funny look at the ways productivity metrics have had an effect on the ways we value ourselves and others in a capitalist society.
Striking workers at an Amazon facility in Minnesota hold a sign that reads ‘we are human not robots’
The daily news is constantly full of stories about the dehumanization of labor from employees at major corporations being fired by an algorithm with no oversight based on productivity metrics all the way to a Goldman Sachs research report questioning if curing patients is a sustainable business model. Marx warned that labor becomes dehumanizing when pushed for capital gain and I’ve never had a work meeting about metrics where his line that ‘alienation appears not merely in the result but also in the process of production; within productive activity itself,’ didn’t come to mind. And this sort of alienation is occurring on the Six Thousand ship, but not simply employees betraying their coworkers to management but losing any identity outside their role as an employee as well as isolating those they don’t feel are like them, “othering” one another.
‘The more human a worker is, the less productive and desirable she is in the cold eyes of the market.’
- Emily Guendelsberger
In a later interview, a crew member in charge of the humanoid development states that ‘the humanoid body is far more valuable than the human body in its basic form,’ and cites their 2 month growth cycle as far more effective for creating employees than the 20 years it takes for a human to develop into an adult. As the humanoids begin to be more self aware and hostile to their human coworkers, the interviewee states ‘we are witnessing a huge creative leap and ought properly to stand aside.’ The push for better productivity and higher profits, they assume, far outweighs the cost of crew lives as the situation is escalating into violence. ‘I may have been made, but now I’m making myself,’ one declares as the proximity to the ‘objects’ make them feel as if they were ‘been dreamt into being.’ I’m reminded of an HR study on cognitive bias that found executives are more likely to view an employee as competent or deserving of higher compensation if performance reviews use dehumanizing language to describe them in mechanistic terms rather than human terms. While we have see this desire to dehumanize the humans into mere metrics, the humanoids seem to be moving in the opposite direction. Even in terms of language, such as naming the objects:
There is this really chilling crosswave of de/humanization going on between the two increasingly alienated entities brought on by the objects that resonates similarly to the anxiety of Philip K. Dick novels. While on the topic of names, the Ravn probes the question that ‘could I be a human if you called me one?’ In a paperwork novel, is being human merely a checkbox in the paperwork? Meanwhile the human crew wonder ‘are we to love them like humans or dogs,’ and always distrustful—or possibly resentful—that they cannot die, having their memories frequently downloaded to be uploaded in another body if ever needed. While the humans mourn the memory of an Earth now lost to them, the humanoids mourn an existence they only suspect they could ever achieve.
‘I feel a similar longing to be human, as if somehow I used to be, but then lost the ability.’
In an interview with Olga Ravn, she says that ‘Actually an idea of what a human is isn’t big enough to actually hold what a human is. You get the sense you are moving in the outskirts of what a person should be, and that interested me.’ This is examined multiple ways in the novel, much like a central scale to perform jazz improvisations upon through the text. One of the most effective, and unsettling, is the way the crew experiments with the idea of the body and where it ends and begins. The objects, for example, are said to be like a hand holding a pearl, with secrets just inside that are somehow both the object and not. Proximity to the objects makes several crew members want to put them in their mouth, toying with this sort of boundary. It is also reflected in their dreams, which are often of the pores in their skin becoming enlarged and carrying small seeds within them that they scratch out endlessly. It is a terrifying image, playing on tryphobia, which is doubled in its metaphor for the way several crew members find that ‘repetitive, organic structures are unbearable,’ ie. quotidian productivity metrics and the insistence on a unified, dehumanized crew.
‘I want to be a good employee, I want to make good choices.’
This novel is both delightful and repulsive all at once, making for an experimental feast of psychological and philosophical insight. It packs in a lot for just 130pgs, which can easily be read one or two sittings as each crew statement tends to be rather brief. It is rather dreamlike, never truly touching anything or providing any concreteness, with the plot and events being read more through the umbra they cast upon the crew’s consciousness. The Employees is a heady delight that wields its fists at corporate productivity while addressing issues of transhumanism, who deserves rights and what makes us actually, fully human.
4.5/5
‘My human co-worker 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 a person be?’’
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. Inspired by an art installation by Lea Guldditte Hestelund, ‘Consumed Future Spewed Up as Present’, as well as the ideas of Ursula K. Le Guin, Ravn presents this riotously ponderous novel as an HR pamphlet of interviews conducted with the crew. 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. The Employees is an imaginative workplace criticism that is as fantastical as it is deeply unsettling, invoking disquieting imagery&mdashl;particularly to those with tryphobia—in a world encompassed by corporate jargon and flattenend identities as Ravn asks us what it means to be human and will we appreciate it before it is too late.
Art installation by Lea Guldditte Hestelund
There is a certain charm to creating a workplace novel that reads like HR paperwork, and Ravn manages to craft a truly engaging and dynamic story within the confines of the style. It exists almost more like an art piece than a traditional novel, amplified by the book being an extension of Lea Guldditte Hestelund’s aforementioned art pieces as well as a references to Barbara Kruger’s art piece Untitled (It's a small world but not if you have to clean it). In effect, this book becomes a museum of ideas.
The latter calls attention to workers who seem invisible to the world while Hestelund’s exhibit uses imagery out of science fiction to examine the relationship between presence and body, both human and non-human. In The Employees the Six Thousand ship discovers curious ‘objects’ on a habitable planet and brings them aboard the ship for observation. We never learn much about the objects (though they are certainly influenced by the pieces in the installation and often described just like the ones shown hanging from the ceiling) but we do observe the effects they have upon the crew, both physically and psychologically.
‘To us, the objects are like an artificial postcard from Earth. To them, they’re a postcard from the future.’
While human crew begin to have strange dreams or break out in boils, the humanoid crew begin to have stirrings of feelings that seem outside their programming and become rather attached to the objects.
‘Why do I have these thoughts if the reason I’m here is primarily to increase production? From what perspective are these thoughts productive? Was there an error in the update? If there was, I’d like to be rebooted.’
The central issue on the ship is always productivity. We see humanoids finding faults in the humans for their feelings getting in the way of work, yet also desiring to have feelings themselves. It becomes a rather bleak yet occasionally darkly funny look at the ways productivity metrics have had an effect on the ways we value ourselves and others in a capitalist society.
Striking workers at an Amazon facility in Minnesota hold a sign that reads ‘we are human not robots’
The daily news is constantly full of stories about the dehumanization of labor from employees at major corporations being fired by an algorithm with no oversight based on productivity metrics all the way to a Goldman Sachs research report questioning if curing patients is a sustainable business model. Marx warned that labor becomes dehumanizing when pushed for capital gain and I’ve never had a work meeting about metrics where his line that ‘alienation appears not merely in the result but also in the process of production; within productive activity itself,’ didn’t come to mind. And this sort of alienation is occurring on the Six Thousand ship, but not simply employees betraying their coworkers to management but losing any identity outside their role as an employee as well as isolating those they don’t feel are like them, “othering” one another.
‘The more human a worker is, the less productive and desirable she is in the cold eyes of the market.’
- Emily Guendelsberger
In a later interview, a crew member in charge of the humanoid development states that ‘the humanoid body is far more valuable than the human body in its basic form,’ and cites their 2 month growth cycle as far more effective for creating employees than the 20 years it takes for a human to develop into an adult. As the humanoids begin to be more self aware and hostile to their human coworkers, the interviewee states ‘we are witnessing a huge creative leap and ought properly to stand aside.’ The push for better productivity and higher profits, they assume, far outweighs the cost of crew lives as the situation is escalating into violence. ‘I may have been made, but now I’m making myself,’ one declares as the proximity to the ‘objects’ make them feel as if they were ‘been dreamt into being.’ I’m reminded of an HR study on cognitive bias that found executives are more likely to view an employee as competent or deserving of higher compensation if performance reviews use dehumanizing language to describe them in mechanistic terms rather than human terms. While we have see this desire to dehumanize the humans into mere metrics, the humanoids seem to be moving in the opposite direction. Even in terms of language, such as naming the objects:
‘My own impression is that this idiosyncratic naming process is an indication that crew members feel a need to appropriate these objects in their own way, reducing the distance between crew member and object, and establishing a form of intimacy, so to speak...scaling down its strangeness and assimilating it into a reality the individual crew members can both relate to and accept, thereby facilitating a coexistence with the found objects.’
There is this really chilling crosswave of de/humanization going on between the two increasingly alienated entities brought on by the objects that resonates similarly to the anxiety of Philip K. Dick novels. While on the topic of names, the Ravn probes the question that ‘could I be a human if you called me one?’ In a paperwork novel, is being human merely a checkbox in the paperwork? Meanwhile the human crew wonder ‘are we to love them like humans or dogs,’ and always distrustful—or possibly resentful—that they cannot die, having their memories frequently downloaded to be uploaded in another body if ever needed. While the humans mourn the memory of an Earth now lost to them, the humanoids mourn an existence they only suspect they could ever achieve.
‘I feel a similar longing to be human, as if somehow I used to be, but then lost the ability.’
In an interview with Olga Ravn, she says that ‘Actually an idea of what a human is isn’t big enough to actually hold what a human is. You get the sense you are moving in the outskirts of what a person should be, and that interested me.’ This is examined multiple ways in the novel, much like a central scale to perform jazz improvisations upon through the text. One of the most effective, and unsettling, is the way the crew experiments with the idea of the body and where it ends and begins. The objects, for example, are said to be like a hand holding a pearl, with secrets just inside that are somehow both the object and not. Proximity to the objects makes several crew members want to put them in their mouth, toying with this sort of boundary. It is also reflected in their dreams, which are often of the pores in their skin becoming enlarged and carrying small seeds within them that they scratch out endlessly. It is a terrifying image, playing on tryphobia, which is doubled in its metaphor for the way several crew members find that ‘repetitive, organic structures are unbearable,’ ie. quotidian productivity metrics and the insistence on a unified, dehumanized crew.
‘I want to be a good employee, I want to make good choices.’
This novel is both delightful and repulsive all at once, making for an experimental feast of psychological and philosophical insight. It packs in a lot for just 130pgs, which can easily be read one or two sittings as each crew statement tends to be rather brief. It is rather dreamlike, never truly touching anything or providing any concreteness, with the plot and events being read more through the umbra they cast upon the crew’s consciousness. The Employees is a heady delight that wields its fists at corporate productivity while addressing issues of transhumanism, who deserves rights and what makes us actually, fully human.
4.5/5
‘My human co-worker 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 a person be?’’
October 24, 2025
Shortlisted for Booker Prize International 2021
Romana:
Traducere de Ovio Olaru.
Imi mai ramasesera doua carti de citit din lista scurta Booker International 2021. Angajatii era una dintre ele. A fost greu de procurat din UK atunci, asa ca m-am bucurat cand Anansi Fiction a anuntat ca o va publica. Cateodata am impresia ca cei care se ocupa de colectie se inspira din TBR-ul meu cand aleg ce carti sa mai scoata.
Cartea este foarte ciudata. Este scrisa in urma participarii autoartei la o expozitie de arta intitulata Consumed Future Spewed Up as Present by Lea Guldditte Hestelund. Recomand sa va uitati la poze cu aceasta expozitia pentru a putea vizualiza camerele si obiectele despre care se vorbeste in carte.
http://www.leagulddittehestelund.dk/i...
Cartea este structurata intr-o serie de rapoarte in legatura cu opiniil/sentimentele angajatiilor unei nave fata de o serie de camere cu obiecte ciudate. “Actiunea” se petrece undeva in viitor iar angajatii sunt fie oameni sau fiinte sintetice. In urma citirii acestor rapoarte, putem distinge teme precum memoria, umanitatea, semnficiatia fericirii, singuratate, frica etc.
English:
Romanian Translation by Ovio Olaru.
I had two books left to read from the Booker International 2021 short list. Employees was one of them. It was hard to get it from the UK back then, so I was delighted when Anansi Fiction announced they would publish it in Romanian.
The book is very strange. It is written after the author’s participation in an art exhibition entitled Consumed Future Spewed Up as Present by Lea Guldditte Hestelund. I recommend that you look at the pictures of this exhibition to be able to visualize the rooms and objects that are described about in the book.
http://www.leagulddittehestelund.dk/i...
The book is structured as a series of reports regarding the opinions/feelings of the employees of ship on a series of rooms with strange objects. The "action" takes place somewhere in the future and the employees are either humans or synthetic beings. After reading these reports we can distinguish themes such as memory, humanity, the meaning of happiness, loneliness, fear, etc.
Romana:
Traducere de Ovio Olaru.
Imi mai ramasesera doua carti de citit din lista scurta Booker International 2021. Angajatii era una dintre ele. A fost greu de procurat din UK atunci, asa ca m-am bucurat cand Anansi Fiction a anuntat ca o va publica. Cateodata am impresia ca cei care se ocupa de colectie se inspira din TBR-ul meu cand aleg ce carti sa mai scoata.
Cartea este foarte ciudata. Este scrisa in urma participarii autoartei la o expozitie de arta intitulata Consumed Future Spewed Up as Present by Lea Guldditte Hestelund. Recomand sa va uitati la poze cu aceasta expozitia pentru a putea vizualiza camerele si obiectele despre care se vorbeste in carte.
http://www.leagulddittehestelund.dk/i...
Cartea este structurata intr-o serie de rapoarte in legatura cu opiniil/sentimentele angajatiilor unei nave fata de o serie de camere cu obiecte ciudate. “Actiunea” se petrece undeva in viitor iar angajatii sunt fie oameni sau fiinte sintetice. In urma citirii acestor rapoarte, putem distinge teme precum memoria, umanitatea, semnficiatia fericirii, singuratate, frica etc.
English:
Romanian Translation by Ovio Olaru.
I had two books left to read from the Booker International 2021 short list. Employees was one of them. It was hard to get it from the UK back then, so I was delighted when Anansi Fiction announced they would publish it in Romanian.
The book is very strange. It is written after the author’s participation in an art exhibition entitled Consumed Future Spewed Up as Present by Lea Guldditte Hestelund. I recommend that you look at the pictures of this exhibition to be able to visualize the rooms and objects that are described about in the book.
http://www.leagulddittehestelund.dk/i...
The book is structured as a series of reports regarding the opinions/feelings of the employees of ship on a series of rooms with strange objects. The "action" takes place somewhere in the future and the employees are either humans or synthetic beings. After reading these reports we can distinguish themes such as memory, humanity, the meaning of happiness, loneliness, fear, etc.
January 18, 2025
Saw the theatre rendition by Łukasz Twarkowski today and absolutely loved the modern take he managed: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/202...
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2021, the runner up for me of the works I read till now. And nominated for the National Book Award translated fiction award!
Olfactory, mysterious objects from another world bring a 22d century spaceship into a dreamlike, Piranesi maze of memories, while a battle about what it means to be human in a hypercapitalistic society is starting
I feel a similar longing to be human, as if somehow I used to be, but then lost the ability.
I really liked this thought provoking, bold and strangely poetic short scifi work. Also do watch this interview with the author on some of the inspirations for the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZW2k...
For such a short work (and with a lot of use of white space, almost poetry like) The Employees packs a lot of topics, including conversations on the nature of humanity, memory, loss and synthetic life. A fictional account of witness statements from an uncaring company documenting the problems a spaceship with 6.000 residents runs into when it picks up a few mysterious object from the world New Discovery. Slowly tensions between those who are born and those who are made become more apparent.
Solaris, with a mysterious entity invading memory and a space station, comes to mind, as does the first season of Star Trek Picard, with its conflicts and discussions on the ethics of synthetic life. This new form of life seems vastly superior to "regular" humans who seem preoccupied with memories of an earth lost (being the ultimate emigrants) and can't download their consciousness Altered Carbon style.
By no means the topics and ideas as such are new but Olga Ravn manages to make this an almost fever dream (but a severely detached one) experience, filled with beautiful sentences:
You’d probably say it was a small world, but not if you have to clean it.
I’d rather be anywhere than wherever I am.
Everything has to travel so far to come into existence.
Why do I have these thoughts if the reason I’m here is primarily to increase production? From what perspective are these thoughts productive? Was there an error in the update? If there was, I’d like to be rebooted.
I may have been made, but now I’m making myself.
We are fatigued and have awaited this juncture with unspoken longing, though it has been secret even to ourselves.
I want to take the opportunity to tell you I’m living. No matter what you say, I’m never going to believe otherwise.
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2021, the runner up for me of the works I read till now. And nominated for the National Book Award translated fiction award!
Olfactory, mysterious objects from another world bring a 22d century spaceship into a dreamlike, Piranesi maze of memories, while a battle about what it means to be human in a hypercapitalistic society is starting
I feel a similar longing to be human, as if somehow I used to be, but then lost the ability.
I really liked this thought provoking, bold and strangely poetic short scifi work. Also do watch this interview with the author on some of the inspirations for the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZW2k...
For such a short work (and with a lot of use of white space, almost poetry like) The Employees packs a lot of topics, including conversations on the nature of humanity, memory, loss and synthetic life. A fictional account of witness statements from an uncaring company documenting the problems a spaceship with 6.000 residents runs into when it picks up a few mysterious object from the world New Discovery. Slowly tensions between those who are born and those who are made become more apparent.
Solaris, with a mysterious entity invading memory and a space station, comes to mind, as does the first season of Star Trek Picard, with its conflicts and discussions on the ethics of synthetic life. This new form of life seems vastly superior to "regular" humans who seem preoccupied with memories of an earth lost (being the ultimate emigrants) and can't download their consciousness Altered Carbon style.
By no means the topics and ideas as such are new but Olga Ravn manages to make this an almost fever dream (but a severely detached one) experience, filled with beautiful sentences:
You’d probably say it was a small world, but not if you have to clean it.
I’d rather be anywhere than wherever I am.
Everything has to travel so far to come into existence.
Why do I have these thoughts if the reason I’m here is primarily to increase production? From what perspective are these thoughts productive? Was there an error in the update? If there was, I’d like to be rebooted.
I may have been made, but now I’m making myself.
We are fatigued and have awaited this juncture with unspoken longing, though it has been secret even to ourselves.
I want to take the opportunity to tell you I’m living. No matter what you say, I’m never going to believe otherwise.
April 30, 2021
I wanted to like this book, especially seeing that so many people seem to love it and that it is currently shortlisted for a booker prize, but alas, there are just too many things that bugged me about it that I can't give it a high rating, nor recommend it.
Firstly, I get that it was probably intentional, but it made me less invested in the 'story' that it was so abstract. You don't get to know much about the interviewees or how they are connected to each other. I understand that the author drew inspiration for the artifacts from a modern art installation, but I don't very much get these kind of things either, so maybe I am just not the right audience for this kind of book.
I am a trained ethnographer myself, and I have never seen interviews like these with so little reference to what is actually going on. For me it was therefore somewhat of a big letdown that everything had to be explained on the final two pages. To me, that makes for bad story telling.
The book certainly makes you ask questions, which I think many would see as one of the reasons to like it, but in my opinion there is just not enough meat here. If you like phenomenology there are plenty of great books in that area. If you are into sci fi then again there are so many wonderful works in that genre.
Overall, I think the idea and the subject of this book is great, especially, as others have mentioned, considering the times we are living in, but to me it is just not that well executed.
Firstly, I get that it was probably intentional, but it made me less invested in the 'story' that it was so abstract. You don't get to know much about the interviewees or how they are connected to each other. I understand that the author drew inspiration for the artifacts from a modern art installation, but I don't very much get these kind of things either, so maybe I am just not the right audience for this kind of book.
I am a trained ethnographer myself, and I have never seen interviews like these with so little reference to what is actually going on. For me it was therefore somewhat of a big letdown that everything had to be explained on the final two pages. To me, that makes for bad story telling.
The book certainly makes you ask questions, which I think many would see as one of the reasons to like it, but in my opinion there is just not enough meat here. If you like phenomenology there are plenty of great books in that area. If you are into sci fi then again there are so many wonderful works in that genre.
Overall, I think the idea and the subject of this book is great, especially, as others have mentioned, considering the times we are living in, but to me it is just not that well executed.
September 1, 2022
Thank you Book*hug Press 🇨🇦 for my beautiful gifted copy in exchange for an honest review. IYKYK, my reviews are ALWAYS honest.
NICHE banger alert 🚨🚨
SYNOPSIS
I can't even describe this... LOL. Humans and humanoids are working together on the Six Thousand Ship and in an attempt to decide the fate of this project, their daily complaints are recorded in staff reports.
MY OPINION
LET ME SAY IT AGAIN: this is a NICHE banger alert. Most of ya'll think I'm just about thrillz and chillz, but ya girl likes to dabble in a literary novella or anthology here and there. This was even more abstract than Bliss Montage. It's just straight up a compilation of "statements" from unknown humans and humanoids. Within these statements you can discern which "class" (for lack of better word) they belong to. I still don't know WTF these mystery objects are, but moving along.
I gave this 5 stars because I've never read something like this before, so if you're a regular on this circuit, don't take my words as gospel. I meant to just skim a couple pages, but I ended up yeeting my current read aside and devouring it in one night. It was just so fascinating to me. And emotional, in a very odd way.
While the overarching context is workplace productivity, my pretentious ass believes each statement explores a deeper topic such as depression/suicide, self-discovery and worth, recovery, immigration, sense of belonging, parenthood, love, nostalgia, personal growth, etc. Perhaps I'm just guessing and Olga is like damn girl you couldn't be farther from the truth, but that's what I deduced from these sparse accounts of human/humanoid life.
I live a sober life but I would imagine if you got blazed out of your mind and read this you would have an out of body experience. All in all, a unique little book that I won't forget.
PROS AND CONS
Pros: unique, well-written, emotional, thought-provoking, introspective
Cons: I wish I knew what the objects were and what humanoids looked like
NICHE banger alert 🚨🚨
SYNOPSIS
I can't even describe this... LOL. Humans and humanoids are working together on the Six Thousand Ship and in an attempt to decide the fate of this project, their daily complaints are recorded in staff reports.
MY OPINION
LET ME SAY IT AGAIN: this is a NICHE banger alert. Most of ya'll think I'm just about thrillz and chillz, but ya girl likes to dabble in a literary novella or anthology here and there. This was even more abstract than Bliss Montage. It's just straight up a compilation of "statements" from unknown humans and humanoids. Within these statements you can discern which "class" (for lack of better word) they belong to. I still don't know WTF these mystery objects are, but moving along.
I gave this 5 stars because I've never read something like this before, so if you're a regular on this circuit, don't take my words as gospel. I meant to just skim a couple pages, but I ended up yeeting my current read aside and devouring it in one night. It was just so fascinating to me. And emotional, in a very odd way.
While the overarching context is workplace productivity, my pretentious ass believes each statement explores a deeper topic such as depression/suicide, self-discovery and worth, recovery, immigration, sense of belonging, parenthood, love, nostalgia, personal growth, etc. Perhaps I'm just guessing and Olga is like damn girl you couldn't be farther from the truth, but that's what I deduced from these sparse accounts of human/humanoid life.
I live a sober life but I would imagine if you got blazed out of your mind and read this you would have an out of body experience. All in all, a unique little book that I won't forget.
PROS AND CONS
Pros: unique, well-written, emotional, thought-provoking, introspective
Cons: I wish I knew what the objects were and what humanoids looked like
Read
February 27, 2024
The Employees - Olga Ravn's masterfully constructed science fiction tale of a crew of humans and humanoids aboard a spaceship, returning with what they term 'objects' from a distant planet.
Since there are a good number of excellent reviews already posted providing incisive analysis of the novella as a whole, I'll take a different approach and zero in on the first three statements in a novella composed entirely of employee statements.
STATEMENT 004
One would think highly specialized scientists would be chosen to interact with extraterrestrial life but no, the organization sends in what appears to be a maid. A maid! Why would the people at the top send in a mere low-level employee? As noted in the opening statement, the reason is clear: for the expressed purpose of determining employee performance and the possibility for enhanced production.
This is madness! How many philosophers and highly creative thinkers in the arts and sciences have imagined first contact with intelligent life in outer space? Here's what the employee reports along with my comments:
“It's not hard to clean them. The big one, I think, sends out a kind of hum, or is it just something I imagine? Maybe that's not what you mean? I'm not sure, but isn't it female? The cords are long, spun from blue and silver fibers. They keep her up with a strap made out of calf-colored leather with prominent white stitching.”
I'll assume the employee is female and call her Ann. Anyway, Ann's primary responsibility seems to be keeping the objects and the room clean. And Ann reports the big object is humming. Might this be a first attempt to communicate species to species?
“One day she'd laid an egg. If I'm allowed to say something here, I don't think you should have her hung up all the time. The egg had cracked when it dropped. The egg mass was on the floor underneath her and the thready end of the shoot was stuck in the egg mass.”
I'm sure many, many biologists would have given anything to examine an egg from an extraterrestrial. And to take the needed care to make sure the lifeform was given every opportunity to hatch. Not the case here – a supreme example of unspeakable stupidity and insensitivity. Carl Sagan would have cried. Ann simply removes the cracked egg and doesn't even bother to inform anyone on the ship of the remarkable phenomenon. Why should she? She knows her role as an employee working for an organization focused exclusively on performance and productivity.
“The next day there was a hum. Louder than that, like an electric rumble. And the day after that she was quiet. She hasn't made a sound since then.”
Perhaps this was a final attempt of the extraterrestrial to communicate but then realizing any attempt was futile.
STATEMENT 012
“I don't like to go in there. The three on the floor seem especially hostile, or maybe it's indifference. As if by being so deeply indifferent they want to hurt me. I can't understand why I feel I've got to touch them. Two of them are always cold, one is warm. You never know which is going to be the warm one.”
This employee strikes me as a complete dullard. He or she doesn't consider what could be a desperate desire to communicate.
“Three individual units attuned to each other. I've seen intimacy between them. It frightens me. I hate it. I've known many more like them. It's as if at any time, one of them can always be the others. As if they don't actually exist on their own, but only in the idea of each other.”
Actually, such attunement can be observed in a flock of birds or a school of fish. Why is such behavior frightening and worthy of hate? Who knows, maybe if the employee sat in silent meditation in the room, they could be included in a larger group attunement.
“They've got a language that breaks me down when I go in. The language is that's there's many, that they're not one, that one of them is the reiteration of all of them.”
Fascinating! What would an accomplished linguist make of their language? We'll never know, after all, such knowledge has little to do with employee performance and productivity.
STATEMENT 006
“When did the dream begin? It must have been after the first couple of weeks. In the dream, 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 recognize myself. I scratch and scratch at my skin until it bleeds.”
Food for a wealth of reflection. Conceivably this is a last ditch attempt of the extraterrestrials to get through to these thick-witted humans. At least in dreams our rational, conscious mind is less active and we can, if we're open and receptive at all, be made aware of aspects of life that are usually closed off from us.
I'll stop here. I've only hit on a few of the many facets of Olga Ravn's unique novella, a book I found progressively both more provocative and disturbing with every turn of the page. What is it about organizations reducing humans to mere employees to be examined for productivity? Is this the ultimate assault on humanity?
5/18/22 UPDATE: ONE MORE STATEMENT
STATEMENT OIO
The statement in full:
"Don't go into the second room. It's not nice in there. You've got the choice. You can make us go in your place. We've already been in there. You can still save yourselves. I don't know if I'm human anymore. Am I human? Does it say in your files what I am?"
Olga Ravn has gobs of black humor seeping between the lines here. The employee, Ann perhaps, is doing her lackey best to warn the boss about what might happen if she/he enters the infamous second room, a room that exudes a toxic presence, so much so that it can strip a person of their humanity, even erase all memories of ever having been human. Ann is completely powerless - she's a flunky, a drone, an underling reduced to asking her boss to check the files to see if there's documentation noting who and what she is. Am I human? Am I a cyborg? Please tell me.
The one possible positive note: Ann appears to be willing to sacrifice herself to save her boss. Is this the ultimate in employee subordination? In stronger language: the ultimate in organizational brainwashing: Ann and all the other lackeys thinking: it's fine if the organization dehumanizes me but as a loyal employee I can still do what's best for the boss and the organization as a whole.
Pathetic.
Danish poet and novelist Olga Ravn
October 8, 2022
Like many books set in the future, the subject is really the present, the future providing distance to pursue themes from a new angle. The Employees is set on a spaceship a century or so in the future. But rather than an adventure story set in the heavens, the book is a series of HR reports taken from interviews with employees of the crew, mostly focused on the crew's interaction with objects retrieved from the planet New Discovery. The result is an insightful analysis of workplace culture as well as a meditation on what it means to be human. The book was written in connection with the art exhibition, Consumed Future Spewed Up as Present, by Lea Guldditte Hestelund. This is a slim volume, demonstrating once again that great literature need not be a doorstop. Published by New Directions in the US and Lolli Editions in the UK, the book is translated by Martin Aitken from the Danish original De ansatte by Olga Ravn.
June 1, 2021
The recent pandemic has caused many people to be furloughed or forced them to change their careers. So it feels especially poignant now to contemplate the degree to which our work defines us and expresses who we are as individuals. “The Employees” by Olga Ravn is a very thoughtful and artfully-written science fiction novel that speaks a lot about this subject through a future-set fantastical point of view. I'm hesitant to filter everything I've been reading lately through the events of the past year, but how we read is often reflective of our states of mind and so I'll naturally have a slanted experience of what I'm reading in response to how the pandemic has consumed my recent life and effected the entire world. This book's relatively new publisher Lolli Editions has also been intimately concerned with the effects of the pandemic as one of their first publications was the anthology “Tools for Extinction” which gathered writers' responses to the pandemic from around the world. Of course, Olga Ravn couldn't have anticipated this reading of her novel because the book was first published in Danish in 2018. Nevertheless, I found a lot of relevancy in how the human and (robotic) humanoid employees of the Six-Thousand Ship discuss their approach to labour in relation to their essential purpose for being. This short novel is composed of over a hundred brief statements given by the ship's crew in relation to some evocative and mysterious objects gathered from a distant planet as well as their perspective about a growing crisis aboard the ship.
Read my full review of The Employees by Olga Ravn on LonesomeReader
Read my full review of The Employees by Olga Ravn on LonesomeReader
July 5, 2021
This book reminded me of something primal and preconscious — a nod to dream logic, collective intelligence and the mother-egg state.
First, the back story: This novel was born out of a collaboration between Danish artist Lea Guldditte Hestelund and writer Olga Ravn. In preparation for an upcoming 2018 solo exhibition in Copenhagen, Hestelund asked Ravn to write four pages for the exhibition programme. The sculptures created for this particular event were made of marble, leather, textiles, scent and fur, and played with the idea of being alive, but not human.
Olga Ravn had a strong visceral reaction to the sculptures and wrote a series of testimonies (or prose poems) about the artworks, which unexpectedly morphed into a full sci-fi novel. The plot: A corporation records the statements of a crew of human and “humanoid” workers aboard a spaceship of the future. Their life revolves around work and productivity. Over time, the crew bring on board a series of strange sculptural objects discovered on a new planet:
“There’s something familiar about them, even if you’ve never seen them before. As if they came from our dreams, or some distant past we carry deep inside us, like a recollection without language. Like a memory of having been an amoeba or some other single-celled organism, or a weightless embryo in a warm fluid, nose and mouth still growing together, as yet only mucous membranes, open and exposed like genitals.”
To humans, the objects read like postcards from faraway Earth. To humanoids (who are “half human, flesh and technology”), they’re a missive from the future, awakening dreams, nostalgia and longing. As symbols that diverge from the existing paradigm of work and productivity, the objects eventually disrupt the ship’s entire ecosystem.
I highly recommend reviewing photos of Hestelund’s exhibition prior to reading the book, as they give the text an entirely different reading dimension. The sculptures are soft, transitional. They remind of human skin, organs, eggs, cocoons. They beg you to touch them, to listen to them. It’s no wonder Ravn was unable to stop writing at four pages.
Combined with the exhibition footage, this book becomes a lyrical-sensory experiment that speaks to multiple levels of consciousness – primordial, human, post-human, inanimate – subverting the idea of art as an individual enterprise. As Ravn shares in an interview:
“We talked a lot about moving away from the idea of the artist as genius and away from the idea that art or the artwork coming from one person is this magnificent achievement. Ultimately moving away from achievement, into using art as a way of relating to the world, relating to each other to make it liveable, to make it bearable to be alive.”
Mood: Surreal, dream-like
Rating: 8/10
Also on Instagram.
Excerpts / object descriptions
The new object, I think they found it beyond the tall trees somewhere. I’m completely obsessed with it. […] The pattern on the object’s surface looks like ink that’s been smudged while it was still wet. The stone is sandy in colour, with black veins that peter out. Like wet prints in a newspaper someone left in the rain. How can I describe it? Have you seen it? It looks like someone wrote on the stone while it was still in creation, but then after it came into being, when gradually it hardened and settled, the words were obliterated in the process, becoming a pattern instead in the shiny stone, a shadow language. I too am marked by now-obliterated words I should have said, whose meaning I no longer recognise.
Against the purple hide, its surface becomes skin. No, that’s not the right word for it. It’s more like a pool of thick liquid that’s been poured onto a non-absorbent cloth. […] I feel I carry it with me, the way a taste sometimes lingers in the mouth. Or perhaps more like a ticklish splinter close to the heart, a splinter travelling slowly through the flesh.
First, the back story: This novel was born out of a collaboration between Danish artist Lea Guldditte Hestelund and writer Olga Ravn. In preparation for an upcoming 2018 solo exhibition in Copenhagen, Hestelund asked Ravn to write four pages for the exhibition programme. The sculptures created for this particular event were made of marble, leather, textiles, scent and fur, and played with the idea of being alive, but not human.
Olga Ravn had a strong visceral reaction to the sculptures and wrote a series of testimonies (or prose poems) about the artworks, which unexpectedly morphed into a full sci-fi novel. The plot: A corporation records the statements of a crew of human and “humanoid” workers aboard a spaceship of the future. Their life revolves around work and productivity. Over time, the crew bring on board a series of strange sculptural objects discovered on a new planet:
“There’s something familiar about them, even if you’ve never seen them before. As if they came from our dreams, or some distant past we carry deep inside us, like a recollection without language. Like a memory of having been an amoeba or some other single-celled organism, or a weightless embryo in a warm fluid, nose and mouth still growing together, as yet only mucous membranes, open and exposed like genitals.”
To humans, the objects read like postcards from faraway Earth. To humanoids (who are “half human, flesh and technology”), they’re a missive from the future, awakening dreams, nostalgia and longing. As symbols that diverge from the existing paradigm of work and productivity, the objects eventually disrupt the ship’s entire ecosystem.
I highly recommend reviewing photos of Hestelund’s exhibition prior to reading the book, as they give the text an entirely different reading dimension. The sculptures are soft, transitional. They remind of human skin, organs, eggs, cocoons. They beg you to touch them, to listen to them. It’s no wonder Ravn was unable to stop writing at four pages.
Combined with the exhibition footage, this book becomes a lyrical-sensory experiment that speaks to multiple levels of consciousness – primordial, human, post-human, inanimate – subverting the idea of art as an individual enterprise. As Ravn shares in an interview:
“We talked a lot about moving away from the idea of the artist as genius and away from the idea that art or the artwork coming from one person is this magnificent achievement. Ultimately moving away from achievement, into using art as a way of relating to the world, relating to each other to make it liveable, to make it bearable to be alive.”
Mood: Surreal, dream-like
Rating: 8/10
Also on Instagram.
Excerpts / object descriptions
The new object, I think they found it beyond the tall trees somewhere. I’m completely obsessed with it. […] The pattern on the object’s surface looks like ink that’s been smudged while it was still wet. The stone is sandy in colour, with black veins that peter out. Like wet prints in a newspaper someone left in the rain. How can I describe it? Have you seen it? It looks like someone wrote on the stone while it was still in creation, but then after it came into being, when gradually it hardened and settled, the words were obliterated in the process, becoming a pattern instead in the shiny stone, a shadow language. I too am marked by now-obliterated words I should have said, whose meaning I no longer recognise.
Against the purple hide, its surface becomes skin. No, that’s not the right word for it. It’s more like a pool of thick liquid that’s been poured onto a non-absorbent cloth. […] I feel I carry it with me, the way a taste sometimes lingers in the mouth. Or perhaps more like a ticklish splinter close to the heart, a splinter travelling slowly through the flesh.
October 30, 2021
I do not know what this was. But I do know that this was written by a true poet. This was so deep and exceptional. 6 stars!
September 14, 2022
Now on the Longlist for Translated Literature for the
2022 US National Book Awards having been shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize.
It is published by a UK small press – Lolli Editions, a London based European publisher which publishes “contemporary fiction that challenges existing ideas and breathes new life into the novel form. Our aim is to make available to English-speaking readers some of the most innovative writers that speak to our shared culture in new and compelling ways, from Europe and beyond.”
This novel I think fits Lolli’s aims well and also seems to fit with the particular slant I see on this year’s International Booker longlist, one even the prize describes as “heterogeneous even by the standards of recent International Booker Prize years” and which seems determined (something like the 2018 main Booker) to showcase a variety of books and perhaps test the definition of the prize – here the focus on “long form fiction”, with among others a novella-lite historical essay, a short piece of oral mythology and this which is part science fiction genre, part art-exhibition companion piece.
The set up of the story is of a spaceship or ships (the Six-Thousand Ships) on a lengthy mission from Earth with a mixed crew of humans and humanoids, who have visited a planet (New Discovery) and taken on board a number of strange living-sculpture like objects which seem to unsettle both humans (whose feeling of loss and bereavement from Earth seems to grow) and the humanoids (who feel a sense of desire for something they have never had).
The story is presented on 130 small pages – with plenty of white space – in the form of a series of witness statements given to a workplace commission, as things start to unravel with tension growing between humans, humanoids and their employer – to a perhaps rather inevitable conclusion.
But the strength of the book lies less in its story arc (which to be honest is rather predictable Sci Fi 101) than its repeating sensory ideas and in its allegorical implications.
Various sensory ideas recur – many of them heavily bound up with the lesser senses (with the author deliberately inverting the standard priority of sight and hearing) and even with these senses in a way which goes beyond the conventional idea of the sense:
- Smell (with the objects having a kind of Proustian impact on those who interact with them, but an impact that seems to vary with the recipient)
- Taste (and much more in the sense that a young baby first uses their mouth as a primary sense and a way of exploring objects – the idea of putting things in your mouth recurs in the book)
- Feel (and again in a wider way – in this case in the sense of skin-crawling negative and phobic type reactions)
And in terms of allegorical implications:
- There is much in the book about motherhood and by extension denied motherhood/infertility including recurring images of eggs and wombs;
- The book explicitly questions the idea of job-as-identity and fulfilment through work;
- The book examines belonging, lost, nostalgia, kinship
- In its examination of what it means to be absent from the familiar as well as what happens if your work-identity is questioned it inadvertently foreshadowed some of the experiences of lockdown and furlough.
- The reactions of the witnesses (particularly in the early testimonies) to the New Discovery objects – which are hung as though in a viewing gallery - reminded me very much of the way that people react to conceptual / installation art. Which is no accident given that the book was explicitly written as an accompaniment to (in fact more of a dialogue and mutual inspiration with) a modern art exhibition - Guldditte Hestelund’s “Consumed Future Spewed Up as Present” (shown at Overgaden).
And the way in which the objects cause people to question their purpose, the humanoids to look for a sense of connection, the humans to mourn the connections they have lost and seek to rediscover their own feelings – I think stands in a meta sense for the very thing that the author is trying to do with this fascinating novella.
Congratulations also to the prolific Martin Aitken for a very natural translation.
Useful references
An interview by the publisher with the author (which inspired my own reading)
https://www.lollieditions.com/lolli-i...
The art exhibition
http://www.leagulddittehestelund.dk/i...
The catalogue which explains something of how the art and novel inter-relate
https://artviewer.org/wp-content/uplo....
2022 US National Book Awards having been shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize.
It is published by a UK small press – Lolli Editions, a London based European publisher which publishes “contemporary fiction that challenges existing ideas and breathes new life into the novel form. Our aim is to make available to English-speaking readers some of the most innovative writers that speak to our shared culture in new and compelling ways, from Europe and beyond.”
This novel I think fits Lolli’s aims well and also seems to fit with the particular slant I see on this year’s International Booker longlist, one even the prize describes as “heterogeneous even by the standards of recent International Booker Prize years” and which seems determined (something like the 2018 main Booker) to showcase a variety of books and perhaps test the definition of the prize – here the focus on “long form fiction”, with among others a novella-lite historical essay, a short piece of oral mythology and this which is part science fiction genre, part art-exhibition companion piece.
The set up of the story is of a spaceship or ships (the Six-Thousand Ships) on a lengthy mission from Earth with a mixed crew of humans and humanoids, who have visited a planet (New Discovery) and taken on board a number of strange living-sculpture like objects which seem to unsettle both humans (whose feeling of loss and bereavement from Earth seems to grow) and the humanoids (who feel a sense of desire for something they have never had).
The story is presented on 130 small pages – with plenty of white space – in the form of a series of witness statements given to a workplace commission, as things start to unravel with tension growing between humans, humanoids and their employer – to a perhaps rather inevitable conclusion.
But the strength of the book lies less in its story arc (which to be honest is rather predictable Sci Fi 101) than its repeating sensory ideas and in its allegorical implications.
Various sensory ideas recur – many of them heavily bound up with the lesser senses (with the author deliberately inverting the standard priority of sight and hearing) and even with these senses in a way which goes beyond the conventional idea of the sense:
- Smell (with the objects having a kind of Proustian impact on those who interact with them, but an impact that seems to vary with the recipient)
- Taste (and much more in the sense that a young baby first uses their mouth as a primary sense and a way of exploring objects – the idea of putting things in your mouth recurs in the book)
- Feel (and again in a wider way – in this case in the sense of skin-crawling negative and phobic type reactions)
And in terms of allegorical implications:
- There is much in the book about motherhood and by extension denied motherhood/infertility including recurring images of eggs and wombs;
- The book explicitly questions the idea of job-as-identity and fulfilment through work;
- The book examines belonging, lost, nostalgia, kinship
- In its examination of what it means to be absent from the familiar as well as what happens if your work-identity is questioned it inadvertently foreshadowed some of the experiences of lockdown and furlough.
- The reactions of the witnesses (particularly in the early testimonies) to the New Discovery objects – which are hung as though in a viewing gallery - reminded me very much of the way that people react to conceptual / installation art. Which is no accident given that the book was explicitly written as an accompaniment to (in fact more of a dialogue and mutual inspiration with) a modern art exhibition - Guldditte Hestelund’s “Consumed Future Spewed Up as Present” (shown at Overgaden).
And the way in which the objects cause people to question their purpose, the humanoids to look for a sense of connection, the humans to mourn the connections they have lost and seek to rediscover their own feelings – I think stands in a meta sense for the very thing that the author is trying to do with this fascinating novella.
Congratulations also to the prolific Martin Aitken for a very natural translation.
Useful references
An interview by the publisher with the author (which inspired my own reading)
https://www.lollieditions.com/lolli-i...
The art exhibition
http://www.leagulddittehestelund.dk/i...
The catalogue which explains something of how the art and novel inter-relate
https://artviewer.org/wp-content/uplo....
September 18, 2023
Now on the Longlist for Translated Literature for the US National Book Awards
Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize in the UK
Ursula K. Le Guin Prize Nominee (2022)
The Employees is Martin Aitken’s translation of Danish author Olga Ravn’s De ansatte.
This is the fifth of his translations I’ve read including the his co-translation of volume 6 of Karl Ove Knausgård’s magnum opus, the Dublin Literary Award shortlisted 'The Prophets of Eternal Fjord' by Kim Leine, and the Republic of Consciousness Prize and National Book Award for Translated Literature shortlisted 'Love' by Hanne Ørstavik, as well as ‘The Skin Is the Elastic Covering That Encases the Entire Body’ by Bjørn Rasmussen
The Employees is published by the exciting new press Lolli Editions, who focus mainly on Danish literature:
In 2020 they published three novels, including this and also New Passengers by Tine Høeg translated from the Danish by Misha Hoekstra which featured on the Republic of Consciousness bookclub - my review: as well as an anthology of world writers Tools for Extinction written in immediate response to Covid-19.
The Employees begins with a dedication “With thanks to Lea Guldditte Hestelund for her installations and sculptures, without which this book would not exist,” and the novel was written in response to, and as part of, an art exhibition Consumed Future Spewed Up as Present by Lea Guldditte Hestelund.
Pictures of the exhibition can be found here:
http://www.leagulddittehestelund.dk/i...
And the catalogue here:
https://artviewer.org/wp-content/uplo...
The conceit of Ravn’s novel is that it is based on a craft Six-Thousand Ship, crewed by both humans and humanoid workers, and orbiting a planet New Discovery, to which it descends periodically to explore and take-away certain objects. These are placed in two rooms connected by a corridor, a set-up that mirrors the art exhibition.
The author has said:
I worked closely together with the artist Lea Guldditte Hestelund, while writing the book, and she suggested a space somewhere between a spaceship and an Alexander Wang flagship store, which was very inspiring to me.
See https://www.yellowtrace.com.au/alexan... for the NY flagship store
A committee of scientific observers interviews the crew members. It begins:
The following statements were collected over a period of 18 months, during which time the committee interviewed the employees with a view to gaining insight into how they related to the objects and the rooms in which they were placed. It was our wish by means of these unprejudiced recordings to gain knowledge of local workflows and to investigate possible impacts of the objects, as well as the ways those impacts, or perhaps relationships, might give rise to permanent deviations in the individual employee, and moreover to assess to what degree they might be said to precipitate reduction or enhancement of performance, task-related understanding and the acquisition of new knowledge and skills, thereby illuminating their specific consequences for production.
There then follows 99 of these statements (from the numbering selected from 179 actually collected), typically less than a page in length:
Some can be mapped back to the exhibition:
STATEMENT 013
I’ve sat waiting in this room many times. There are no windows, but a door on the left and a corridor on the right. The walls are white, and the floor is orange. An L-shaped bench stands in the middle of the room, and there are niches in the walls where you can hang your suit while you wait. I like sitting here the best. You can come here to be on your own. The ceiling can open in the middle to let in a column of light. You put your hands into the light first, then your bare feet, and finally your whole head. It feels wonderful, like getting washed. A tingle of expectancy runs through your body, like tiny electric shocks. Or perhaps they are electric shocks? Do you know? Are they electric shocks, is that it? Afterwards, you’re ready to enter the room. If you’re not human enough, or in some other way lack standing, for instance if you’ve been neglecting your work here, or if, well, allow me to be bold, if in any way you’ve inconvenienced the organisation, then you can wait as long as you want, the column of light isn’t going to appear. You won’t be permitted into the room. You’re not clean.
Many centre on sensory stimulation, particularly touch and smell. The human crew members have their memories of home, the humanoids their programmed reactions, and even the objects themselves seem to have some sentience, giving off a hum or heat seemingly to express their state of mind.
STATEMENT 011
The fragrance in the room has four hearts. None of these hearts is human, and that’s why I’m drawn towards them. At the base of this fragrance is soil and oakmoss, incense, and the smell of an insect captured in amber. A brown scent. Pungent and abiding. It can remain on the skin, in the nostrils, for up to a week. I know the smell of oakmoss, because you’ve planted it inside me, just as you’ve planted the idea that I should love one man only, be loyal to one man only, and that I should allow myself to be courted. All of us here are condemned to a dream of romantic love, even though no one I know loves in that way, or lives that kind of a life. Yet these are the dreams you’ve given us. I know the smell of oakmoss, but I don’t know what it feels like to the touch. Still, my hand bears the faint perception of me standing at the edge of a wood and staring out at the sea as my palm smoothes this moss on the trunk of the oak. Tell me, did you plant this perception in me? Is it a part of the programme? Or did the image come up from inside me, of its own accord?
And as the story progresses both humans and humanoids start to suffer olfactory hallucinations, disturbing dreams, skin eruptions, abnormal levels of mental activity verging on the pathological, leading to divides between the two groups and the need for some fundamental decisions about the future of the programme.
Very impressive and one I hope to see on the shortlist.
Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize in the UK
Ursula K. Le Guin Prize Nominee (2022)
The Employees is Martin Aitken’s translation of Danish author Olga Ravn’s De ansatte.
This is the fifth of his translations I’ve read including the his co-translation of volume 6 of Karl Ove Knausgård’s magnum opus, the Dublin Literary Award shortlisted 'The Prophets of Eternal Fjord' by Kim Leine, and the Republic of Consciousness Prize and National Book Award for Translated Literature shortlisted 'Love' by Hanne Ørstavik, as well as ‘The Skin Is the Elastic Covering That Encases the Entire Body’ by Bjørn Rasmussen
The Employees is published by the exciting new press Lolli Editions, who focus mainly on Danish literature:
We publish contemporary fiction that challenges existing ideas and breathes new life into the novel form. Our aim is to make available to English-speaking readers some of the most innovative writers that speak to our shared culture in new and compelling ways, from Europe and beyond.
Antonio Lolli was an itinerant 18th-century composer who lived between Scandinavia, England, Russia and Italy. Transcending traditional, national “schools”, Lolli worked from the ethic that artistic thought, and the means through which it could express itself, should be the basis of art, rather than following the predetermined rules of a school.
In 2020 they published three novels, including this and also New Passengers by Tine Høeg translated from the Danish by Misha Hoekstra which featured on the Republic of Consciousness bookclub - my review: as well as an anthology of world writers Tools for Extinction written in immediate response to Covid-19.
The Employees begins with a dedication “With thanks to Lea Guldditte Hestelund for her installations and sculptures, without which this book would not exist,” and the novel was written in response to, and as part of, an art exhibition Consumed Future Spewed Up as Present by Lea Guldditte Hestelund.
Pictures of the exhibition can be found here:
http://www.leagulddittehestelund.dk/i...
And the catalogue here:
https://artviewer.org/wp-content/uplo...
The conceit of Ravn’s novel is that it is based on a craft Six-Thousand Ship, crewed by both humans and humanoid workers, and orbiting a planet New Discovery, to which it descends periodically to explore and take-away certain objects. These are placed in two rooms connected by a corridor, a set-up that mirrors the art exhibition.
The author has said:
I worked closely together with the artist Lea Guldditte Hestelund, while writing the book, and she suggested a space somewhere between a spaceship and an Alexander Wang flagship store, which was very inspiring to me.
See https://www.yellowtrace.com.au/alexan... for the NY flagship store
A committee of scientific observers interviews the crew members. It begins:
The following statements were collected over a period of 18 months, during which time the committee interviewed the employees with a view to gaining insight into how they related to the objects and the rooms in which they were placed. It was our wish by means of these unprejudiced recordings to gain knowledge of local workflows and to investigate possible impacts of the objects, as well as the ways those impacts, or perhaps relationships, might give rise to permanent deviations in the individual employee, and moreover to assess to what degree they might be said to precipitate reduction or enhancement of performance, task-related understanding and the acquisition of new knowledge and skills, thereby illuminating their specific consequences for production.
There then follows 99 of these statements (from the numbering selected from 179 actually collected), typically less than a page in length:
Some can be mapped back to the exhibition:
STATEMENT 013
I’ve sat waiting in this room many times. There are no windows, but a door on the left and a corridor on the right. The walls are white, and the floor is orange. An L-shaped bench stands in the middle of the room, and there are niches in the walls where you can hang your suit while you wait. I like sitting here the best. You can come here to be on your own. The ceiling can open in the middle to let in a column of light. You put your hands into the light first, then your bare feet, and finally your whole head. It feels wonderful, like getting washed. A tingle of expectancy runs through your body, like tiny electric shocks. Or perhaps they are electric shocks? Do you know? Are they electric shocks, is that it? Afterwards, you’re ready to enter the room. If you’re not human enough, or in some other way lack standing, for instance if you’ve been neglecting your work here, or if, well, allow me to be bold, if in any way you’ve inconvenienced the organisation, then you can wait as long as you want, the column of light isn’t going to appear. You won’t be permitted into the room. You’re not clean.
Many centre on sensory stimulation, particularly touch and smell. The human crew members have their memories of home, the humanoids their programmed reactions, and even the objects themselves seem to have some sentience, giving off a hum or heat seemingly to express their state of mind.
STATEMENT 011
The fragrance in the room has four hearts. None of these hearts is human, and that’s why I’m drawn towards them. At the base of this fragrance is soil and oakmoss, incense, and the smell of an insect captured in amber. A brown scent. Pungent and abiding. It can remain on the skin, in the nostrils, for up to a week. I know the smell of oakmoss, because you’ve planted it inside me, just as you’ve planted the idea that I should love one man only, be loyal to one man only, and that I should allow myself to be courted. All of us here are condemned to a dream of romantic love, even though no one I know loves in that way, or lives that kind of a life. Yet these are the dreams you’ve given us. I know the smell of oakmoss, but I don’t know what it feels like to the touch. Still, my hand bears the faint perception of me standing at the edge of a wood and staring out at the sea as my palm smoothes this moss on the trunk of the oak. Tell me, did you plant this perception in me? Is it a part of the programme? Or did the image come up from inside me, of its own accord?
And as the story progresses both humans and humanoids start to suffer olfactory hallucinations, disturbing dreams, skin eruptions, abnormal levels of mental activity verging on the pathological, leading to divides between the two groups and the need for some fundamental decisions about the future of the programme.
Very impressive and one I hope to see on the shortlist.
August 6, 2025
I know you say I’m not a prisoner here, but the objects have told me otherwise.
A psychologically immersive speculative fiction novella, The Employees is an account of statements collected from human and humanoid AI workers on a generation ship, responsible for cleaning and taking care of a collection of objects stored/ displayed in various rooms of the space ship.
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.
The statements go from cataloging the jobs and day-to-day responsibilities of the employees to exploring their feelings and worries as the journey progresses - extrapolating to show not just the effects of the mysterious objects on them, but also the philosophical considerations of humans and AI humanoids working together over such a long time. One can't help but be affected by the other, and not always for the better.
The thing that’s made the biggest difference for my work is without doubt being allocated half an hour with a child hologram of my son before lights out in Wing 08.
Conveying all the introspection and profound change in the employees through just statements at the regular doctors' check-ins showcases the skill and inherent talent of the author Olga Ravn, does justice by the translator. The impetus for the plot mostly happens before the journey even starts, determined by the employees and jobs given and the mysterious objective of the whole ship only vaguely referred to in the whole book.
It’s been on our list of possible outcomes all along. We’re ready. I want to take the opportunity to tell you I’m living. No matter what you say, I’m never going to believe otherwise. Enter it into the record.
The novella just documents the unraveling of the strange society on-board, the journey seeming to become as much a psychological experiment as the original mysterious objective. The themes of humanity and personhood explored in the book - in the humans through their attachment to the cargo, their 'a half hour with a child hologram', and in the AI through their yearning to understand and be recognized as living - provide a lot of food for thought long after the novella ends.
Do you think anyone’s going to remember us? Who remembers those who were never born, yet live anyway?
🌟🌟🌟🌟
[3/4 star for the premise and the whole book; 3/4 star for the characters and their growth; 3/4 star for the plot and themes; 3/4 star for the world-building; One star for the writing - 4 stars in total.]
I hadn’t been here very long before I started to feel a certain kind of connection with the objects in the room.
A psychologically immersive speculative fiction novella, The Employees is an account of statements collected from human and humanoid AI workers on a generation ship, responsible for cleaning and taking care of a collection of objects stored/ displayed in various rooms of the space ship.
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.
The statements go from cataloging the jobs and day-to-day responsibilities of the employees to exploring their feelings and worries as the journey progresses - extrapolating to show not just the effects of the mysterious objects on them, but also the philosophical considerations of humans and AI humanoids working together over such a long time. One can't help but be affected by the other, and not always for the better.
The thing that’s made the biggest difference for my work is without doubt being allocated half an hour with a child hologram of my son before lights out in Wing 08.
Conveying all the introspection and profound change in the employees through just statements at the regular doctors' check-ins showcases the skill and inherent talent of the author Olga Ravn, does justice by the translator. The impetus for the plot mostly happens before the journey even starts, determined by the employees and jobs given and the mysterious objective of the whole ship only vaguely referred to in the whole book.
It’s been on our list of possible outcomes all along. We’re ready. I want to take the opportunity to tell you I’m living. No matter what you say, I’m never going to believe otherwise. Enter it into the record.
The novella just documents the unraveling of the strange society on-board, the journey seeming to become as much a psychological experiment as the original mysterious objective. The themes of humanity and personhood explored in the book - in the humans through their attachment to the cargo, their 'a half hour with a child hologram', and in the AI through their yearning to understand and be recognized as living - provide a lot of food for thought long after the novella ends.
Do you think anyone’s going to remember us? Who remembers those who were never born, yet live anyway?
🌟🌟🌟🌟
[3/4 star for the premise and the whole book; 3/4 star for the characters and their growth; 3/4 star for the plot and themes; 3/4 star for the world-building; One star for the writing - 4 stars in total.]
I hadn’t been here very long before I started to feel a certain kind of connection with the objects in the room.
January 13, 2022
STATEMENT 010
Don't go into the second room. It's not nice in there. You've got the choice, you can make us go in your place. We've already been in there. You can still save yourselves. I don't know if I'm human anymore. Am I human? Does it say in your files what I am?
Six-Thousand ship has taken on several "objects." The crew members visit them, and react in different ways to the strange captives.
STATEMENT 024
I keep thinking about the one on the purple hide. Something about it makes me react differently than the others do. Is this what my coworkers have told me about? 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?
There's a lot of questions there, but the answer to that last one is YES. Definitely. Be worried. Be very worried.
The story is told through a series of beautifully written and mesmerizing brief statements. The author keeps things deliberately vague, and there's a lot going on here. Are the interviewees talking about the objects, or their coworkers, many of whom are not human? A sensitive reader will indeed be worried. Impending doom is in the air . . .
This is definitely one workplace where you need to watch your back. Then again, that sounds like just another day at the office.
Can we get a comment on that, Jim Halpert?
Don't go into the second room. It's not nice in there. You've got the choice, you can make us go in your place. We've already been in there. You can still save yourselves. I don't know if I'm human anymore. Am I human? Does it say in your files what I am?
Six-Thousand ship has taken on several "objects." The crew members visit them, and react in different ways to the strange captives.
STATEMENT 024
I keep thinking about the one on the purple hide. Something about it makes me react differently than the others do. Is this what my coworkers have told me about? 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?
There's a lot of questions there, but the answer to that last one is YES. Definitely. Be worried. Be very worried.
The story is told through a series of beautifully written and mesmerizing brief statements. The author keeps things deliberately vague, and there's a lot going on here. Are the interviewees talking about the objects, or their coworkers, many of whom are not human? A sensitive reader will indeed be worried. Impending doom is in the air . . .
This is definitely one workplace where you need to watch your back. Then again, that sounds like just another day at the office.
Can we get a comment on that, Jim Halpert?
August 1, 2023
A strange tapestry of prose examining what it means to be human while satirizing workplace culture.
Set in a ship in the future, a crew of human and humanoids are being interviewed by an unnamed entity from the corporation for which they work. After circling the planet New Discovery and finding 'objects' which they bring on board the ship, the crew begin to have strange experiences. The humans long for Earth, while the humanoids begin to experience feelings outside of their programming.
What follows is a collection of flash fiction pieces, almost like poetry, that recounts these interviews conducted by the corporation to understand the effect the 'objects' have on the crew. Each chapter is short - sometimes a single sentence, at most 2-3 pages - and is simply labeled 'Statement 004' or 'Statement 012' etc. No explicitly named narrators/characters are present, but instead Ravn combines their voices into a chorus where the humans and humanoids at times begin to bleed together.
This was a bizarre read, no doubt. I struggled to fully understand it at first, but eventually gave up tying to fully follow along and read it more like poetry. The overall effect is more compelling than needing to absorb all the information, at least on the first reading. It's just over 100 pages and reads very quickly, so I could definitely see myself reading it again in the future. Aitken did a great job translating as well! I can see why this got nominated for the International Booker Prize a few years ago.
Set in a ship in the future, a crew of human and humanoids are being interviewed by an unnamed entity from the corporation for which they work. After circling the planet New Discovery and finding 'objects' which they bring on board the ship, the crew begin to have strange experiences. The humans long for Earth, while the humanoids begin to experience feelings outside of their programming.
What follows is a collection of flash fiction pieces, almost like poetry, that recounts these interviews conducted by the corporation to understand the effect the 'objects' have on the crew. Each chapter is short - sometimes a single sentence, at most 2-3 pages - and is simply labeled 'Statement 004' or 'Statement 012' etc. No explicitly named narrators/characters are present, but instead Ravn combines their voices into a chorus where the humans and humanoids at times begin to bleed together.
This was a bizarre read, no doubt. I struggled to fully understand it at first, but eventually gave up tying to fully follow along and read it more like poetry. The overall effect is more compelling than needing to absorb all the information, at least on the first reading. It's just over 100 pages and reads very quickly, so I could definitely see myself reading it again in the future. Aitken did a great job translating as well! I can see why this got nominated for the International Booker Prize a few years ago.
March 2, 2025
The Employees is a piece of philosophical science-fiction. Each page is a new witness statement from the crew of a ship, which ultimately gives it the formatting of prose poetry. In a genre piece like this, that formatting sounded fascinating and has been something I’ve wanted to find and read for a long time. My eagerness to find just such a book has meant my disappointment in reading The Employees feels additionally bitter.
Unfortunately though, this book is just dull and lacklustre. I could put it down to a bad translation, and thereby some loss of poetic vision, but that wouldn’t have provided any explanation for the plot. To clarify, there is an overarching plot, despite the format, and I simply had no interest in it. The book felt torn between this poetic formatting and the need for the overarching plot and it suffers for it; it seems as though both aspects fail because of the other’s presence.
Even being incredibly forgiving of others’ right to subjectivity, I’m a tad confused as to how this has done so well critically. The cover and inner pages are littered with award nominations and good reviews and I went back to them a few times while reading simply in disbelief. I just didn’t see what they did.
If you want good science fiction then I wouldn’t recommend this.
If you want good philosophical fiction then I wouldn’t recommend this.
If you want good prose poetry then I wouldn’t recommend this.
There is simply far better alternatives for all three.
I will say though, despite my assessment of this books failings, I still hope to find a similar book again one day so as to see this style done better.
Unfortunately though, this book is just dull and lacklustre. I could put it down to a bad translation, and thereby some loss of poetic vision, but that wouldn’t have provided any explanation for the plot. To clarify, there is an overarching plot, despite the format, and I simply had no interest in it. The book felt torn between this poetic formatting and the need for the overarching plot and it suffers for it; it seems as though both aspects fail because of the other’s presence.
Even being incredibly forgiving of others’ right to subjectivity, I’m a tad confused as to how this has done so well critically. The cover and inner pages are littered with award nominations and good reviews and I went back to them a few times while reading simply in disbelief. I just didn’t see what they did.
If you want good science fiction then I wouldn’t recommend this.
If you want good philosophical fiction then I wouldn’t recommend this.
If you want good prose poetry then I wouldn’t recommend this.
There is simply far better alternatives for all three.
I will say though, despite my assessment of this books failings, I still hope to find a similar book again one day so as to see this style done better.
June 22, 2025
Told through statements from employees--both human and humanoid--on a ship in the distant future, Ravn critiques the system that we are trapped in, which defines our "worth" only through our level of productivity/what we put into the system while asking the question: what does it mean to be human? At times it's horrific, at times it's hilarious, at times it is beautiful. It is always poignant.
January 10, 2024
About a group of employees (some humans, other humanoid) aboard a space ship filled with otherworldly objects. The story is told through transcripts and is basically about their growing attachments to these alien objects.
This is vague and weird 😂 I really didn’t know what was happening at any point, but I liked it, disjointed as it was. It kinda reminded me of Authority by Jeff Vandermeer, and of the interactables you can read in the game Control.
It was kinda funny in a neurotic way, a bit sad, full of yearning. Yeah, it’s a weird one.
This is vague and weird 😂 I really didn’t know what was happening at any point, but I liked it, disjointed as it was. It kinda reminded me of Authority by Jeff Vandermeer, and of the interactables you can read in the game Control.
It was kinda funny in a neurotic way, a bit sad, full of yearning. Yeah, it’s a weird one.
June 16, 2021
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, 2021.
Isn't it strange that we sometimes look at others and just see ourselves reflected back, as if people themselves turn into mirrors when the world closes in on us and we begin to see the general in all the particulars? And then it's the general we struggle with, the human capacity and its seeming finiteness. We try to probe the limits and see if the category can be expanded, and this is of great significance in our age of accelerated AI development. We know we'll soon have to rethink what it means to be sentient, what it means to be sentient and human, but we are so selfish in preserving our uniqueness that we'd rather never do it. Our sense perception has guaranteed the individuality of our existence. Even if confronted with the same data, each of us hears, sees and feels like no other. Yet, we are required to assign an abstract value to the human character so that we aren't completely assailed by our own eccentricities. And we have been struggling with this for so long now. What does it mean to be human?
This is precisely the question Olga Ravn is trying to seek answers to in this book. The two sets of beings in The Employees, human and humanoid are both wary of each other while also recognising an ineffable universality in their experiences. Confronted with the same threats and the same maddening hallucinations, the humans are combating their mortalities, the humanoids are trying to understand the nature of memory loss, both are losing their uniqueness. And even while facing the same problems, they are all alienating each other and themselves. Perhaps that's an essential quality of being human: estrangement from the self and others.
Would it be so terrible not to be human? Would it mean not dying? I’m not sure I still feel pride in my humanity.
Isn't it strange that we sometimes look at others and just see ourselves reflected back, as if people themselves turn into mirrors when the world closes in on us and we begin to see the general in all the particulars? And then it's the general we struggle with, the human capacity and its seeming finiteness. We try to probe the limits and see if the category can be expanded, and this is of great significance in our age of accelerated AI development. We know we'll soon have to rethink what it means to be sentient, what it means to be sentient and human, but we are so selfish in preserving our uniqueness that we'd rather never do it. Our sense perception has guaranteed the individuality of our existence. Even if confronted with the same data, each of us hears, sees and feels like no other. Yet, we are required to assign an abstract value to the human character so that we aren't completely assailed by our own eccentricities. And we have been struggling with this for so long now. What does it mean to be human?
This is precisely the question Olga Ravn is trying to seek answers to in this book. The two sets of beings in The Employees, human and humanoid are both wary of each other while also recognising an ineffable universality in their experiences. Confronted with the same threats and the same maddening hallucinations, the humans are combating their mortalities, the humanoids are trying to understand the nature of memory loss, both are losing their uniqueness. And even while facing the same problems, they are all alienating each other and themselves. Perhaps that's an essential quality of being human: estrangement from the self and others.
Would it be so terrible not to be human? Would it mean not dying? I’m not sure I still feel pride in my humanity.
February 9, 2024
One downside to reading a lot of novels is that they can start to feel a bit samey. I can’t complain about a lack or originality in this one though, at least not in how it is structured.
The “employees” of the title are the crew of a spaceship, and they are a mix of humans and “humanoids” – artificial humans who have been programmed to undertake work tasks, and who download regular updates. The crew have located an exoplanet they name New Discovery, and have taken from it a variety of mysterious “objects”. These seem to have unexplained effects on the crew. The novel consists of a series of short statements made by employees to some sort of management group. The individuals are not identified and the statements are listed only by number, “Statement 026”, “Statement 034” and so on. One oddity is that the statements do not appear in strict sequential number order in the novel. I wasn’t clear as to why it was organised that way, unless it was to create an impression of an expedition that was poorly organised and haphazard.
This is a short book, a novella rather than a novel, and I think most of us would get through it in a day or two. To begin with I found it intriguing, wondering where it would lead, but the themes started to become clear by about halfway through. I would say the main one is the relationship between the humans and the humanoids. The role of memory is also prominent with the human characters, and there is probably a message contained within the portrayal of the faceless and seemingly emotionless board of directors, who have ultimate control over the ship and its mission.
Despite the book’s unusual format, in the end I didn’t feel there was much in the novel that was new.
The “employees” of the title are the crew of a spaceship, and they are a mix of humans and “humanoids” – artificial humans who have been programmed to undertake work tasks, and who download regular updates. The crew have located an exoplanet they name New Discovery, and have taken from it a variety of mysterious “objects”. These seem to have unexplained effects on the crew. The novel consists of a series of short statements made by employees to some sort of management group. The individuals are not identified and the statements are listed only by number, “Statement 026”, “Statement 034” and so on. One oddity is that the statements do not appear in strict sequential number order in the novel. I wasn’t clear as to why it was organised that way, unless it was to create an impression of an expedition that was poorly organised and haphazard.
This is a short book, a novella rather than a novel, and I think most of us would get through it in a day or two. To begin with I found it intriguing, wondering where it would lead, but the themes started to become clear by about halfway through. I would say the main one is the relationship between the humans and the humanoids. The role of memory is also prominent with the human characters, and there is probably a message contained within the portrayal of the faceless and seemingly emotionless board of directors, who have ultimate control over the ship and its mission.
Despite the book’s unusual format, in the end I didn’t feel there was much in the novel that was new.
July 4, 2021
(3.5) An unusual and ephemeral sci-fi novella (novelette? it’s ‘read the whole thing on your lunch break’ material, if you want it to be). Composed of numerous statements, it charts the thoughts, feelings and activities of employees – both human and humanoid – on board the Six-Thousand Ship. Many of their duties involve caring for the organic ‘objects’ found on foreign planets. The statements are often uneasily, queasily sensual, evoking disquieting images. There are flecks of humour, most obvious when the employees’ language bumps up against the kind of jargon used in the 21st-century workplace, and traces of pathos. The book is difficult to categorise; I can only think to group it with other uncategorisable work, for example the writing of such idiosyncratic stylists as Irenosen Okojie, Guadalupe Nettel and Cristina Rivera Garza. I know I’ll remember the unsettling way it made me feel longer than I remember any of the details.
TinyLetter | Linktree
TinyLetter | Linktree
October 5, 2021
102nd book of 2021. Artist for this review is Lea Guldditte Hestelund, with whom this novel began as a collaboration with*.
3.5. An extremely tricky novel to review because it sits within that awkward space as being interesting, thought-provoking, but at the same time, devoid of fully grasping something, reaching its supposed purpose, if we believe that novels such as these have purposes. The distinctive thing about The Employees is that Ravn did not originally set out to write a novel. As she says in an interview**,
"The Arrival Room"
Inspired by Hestelund's art and Le Guin's writing, Ravn developed The Employees, subtitled "A workplace novel of the 22nd century". It's a short novel and told only through witness statements by humans and humanoids alike. Without reading the blurb one might be relatively lost on what is going on within the pages. Ravn wastes no time explaining anything and in that sense the novel falls into that strange space of "hardcore" sci-fi, where answers are not readily given. On the spaceship 'Six-Thousand' there are humans like us from planet Earth and humans, humanoids, that were 'made', and never saw our planet. From another planet, 'New Discovery', strange objects were found (we can surmise that the novel's jumping-point was these objects, no doubt inspired by the strange objects throughout Hestelund's exhibition), and brought onboard. Now the crew, the employees, are reacting to them, and many of the witness statements refer to these strange objects which trigger emotions in humans and humanoids both (a lot of the time the distinction between either human or unhuman isn't made clear in the statement). The novel is hinged around these objects and what the humans and humanoids onboard feel. There is a creepiness to the novel all the way through, especially by the end, that comes from the form of these witness statements. It brings an odd silence to the text, perfect for the 'Six-Thousand' hurtlingly through the vacuum of space; it is like a chorus of voices all talking into a dead telephone line.
One quote on the book describes the novel as being as if 'Samuel Beckett wrote the script for Alien'. I didn't massively feel the Beckettness but there's something to be said about it all the same. It is an impressive novel that feels so full and empty at once. Lines like this, 'We don't fly under a sky here, but through a slumbering infinity', only add to the desolate wasteland of space that is forever just on the edge of the narrative, on the outside. The objects are never truly explained but give off great sense of smell, touch and feelings for the employees and these are explained well by Ravn. I think above all it is a novel about longing, partly about home, and of course, what makes us human and what art has to do with that. The latter themes remind of Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. Ravn says in her interview, 'In all my books I’ve been interested in finding—I know it is not possible—but the area between what you are and what you are told', which then places another theme into the short book: the self; she also says, 'Actually an idea of what a human is isn’t big enough to actually hold what a human is. You get the sense you are moving in the outskirts of what a person should be, and that interested me.'
"The Inner Space"
The full interview is linked down below and unpacks a lot more. From that springboard, the novel became the vessel for a lot of thoughts. In a way it deserves more than the 3-stars I gave it for being original, creepy, thought-provoking. I also think, despite my rating, it belongs on the shortlist because the idea of our longing, our human longing, and what makes us human, what makes us what we are and how we are connected to our planet and to others, is vitally important for today's world. I recommend the novel strongly for these reasons alone. Maybe if it sits in my mind even more I'll bump it up to 4-stars. The interview ends with these lines,
_________________________________
*Full art exhibition here, titled Consumed Future Spewed Up as Present.
**Full interview here.
3.5. An extremely tricky novel to review because it sits within that awkward space as being interesting, thought-provoking, but at the same time, devoid of fully grasping something, reaching its supposed purpose, if we believe that novels such as these have purposes. The distinctive thing about The Employees is that Ravn did not originally set out to write a novel. As she says in an interview**,
'At that time I was very unsatisfied with my own job, I worked in an office. So I asked Lea if I could do something about people working for the exhibition. When I began to write I quickly realised that it would be more than four pages, and we ended up doing a book. They were lying around in the exhibition space, with no name, as if the text was a part of the artwork. A month later it was published as a novel.'
"The Arrival Room"
Inspired by Hestelund's art and Le Guin's writing, Ravn developed The Employees, subtitled "A workplace novel of the 22nd century". It's a short novel and told only through witness statements by humans and humanoids alike. Without reading the blurb one might be relatively lost on what is going on within the pages. Ravn wastes no time explaining anything and in that sense the novel falls into that strange space of "hardcore" sci-fi, where answers are not readily given. On the spaceship 'Six-Thousand' there are humans like us from planet Earth and humans, humanoids, that were 'made', and never saw our planet. From another planet, 'New Discovery', strange objects were found (we can surmise that the novel's jumping-point was these objects, no doubt inspired by the strange objects throughout Hestelund's exhibition), and brought onboard. Now the crew, the employees, are reacting to them, and many of the witness statements refer to these strange objects which trigger emotions in humans and humanoids both (a lot of the time the distinction between either human or unhuman isn't made clear in the statement). The novel is hinged around these objects and what the humans and humanoids onboard feel. There is a creepiness to the novel all the way through, especially by the end, that comes from the form of these witness statements. It brings an odd silence to the text, perfect for the 'Six-Thousand' hurtlingly through the vacuum of space; it is like a chorus of voices all talking into a dead telephone line.
One quote on the book describes the novel as being as if 'Samuel Beckett wrote the script for Alien'. I didn't massively feel the Beckettness but there's something to be said about it all the same. It is an impressive novel that feels so full and empty at once. Lines like this, 'We don't fly under a sky here, but through a slumbering infinity', only add to the desolate wasteland of space that is forever just on the edge of the narrative, on the outside. The objects are never truly explained but give off great sense of smell, touch and feelings for the employees and these are explained well by Ravn. I think above all it is a novel about longing, partly about home, and of course, what makes us human and what art has to do with that. The latter themes remind of Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. Ravn says in her interview, 'In all my books I’ve been interested in finding—I know it is not possible—but the area between what you are and what you are told', which then places another theme into the short book: the self; she also says, 'Actually an idea of what a human is isn’t big enough to actually hold what a human is. You get the sense you are moving in the outskirts of what a person should be, and that interested me.'
"The Inner Space"
The full interview is linked down below and unpacks a lot more. From that springboard, the novel became the vessel for a lot of thoughts. In a way it deserves more than the 3-stars I gave it for being original, creepy, thought-provoking. I also think, despite my rating, it belongs on the shortlist because the idea of our longing, our human longing, and what makes us human, what makes us what we are and how we are connected to our planet and to others, is vitally important for today's world. I recommend the novel strongly for these reasons alone. Maybe if it sits in my mind even more I'll bump it up to 4-stars. The interview ends with these lines,
'I like to sit with the thought that right now we have thousands of eggs inside of us. Clusters and clusters and clusters of tiny eggs. Also even more bacteria, we have so much bacteria going on. You could almost say we are vessels for these lifeforms. As such, The Employees is about moving away from the singular, as it is a group of people talking, but also viewing your own body not as a central thing but as a home for yeast, bacteria, blood and virus. I’m not making it up, it’s not a metaphor. It’s real life.'
_________________________________
*Full art exhibition here, titled Consumed Future Spewed Up as Present.
**Full interview here.
April 22, 2021
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2021
This was the last of the seven books I ordered when the International Booker longlist was announced, and given how highly rated it is in the Mookse group, I found it a little disappointing. The plot is set on a 22nd century spaceship in which work is shared between humans and androids. It consists of a series of statements by individual crew members, most of whom do not indicate whether they are human or not, and to some extent their aspirations converge, but this also threatens their mission. So quite a bold concept, but a bit slight in execution.
This was the last of the seven books I ordered when the International Booker longlist was announced, and given how highly rated it is in the Mookse group, I found it a little disappointing. The plot is set on a 22nd century spaceship in which work is shared between humans and androids. It consists of a series of statements by individual crew members, most of whom do not indicate whether they are human or not, and to some extent their aspirations converge, but this also threatens their mission. So quite a bold concept, but a bit slight in execution.
June 17, 2018
Det er helt ualmindeligt svært at skrive en anmeldelse af Olga Ravns ‘De ansatte’, og det forklarer måske også, hvorfor jeg har brugt en måned på at læse og fordøje den korte 134-siders roman. Siderne er få, romanen er sådan set lille, men historien er stor, og handlingen sætter sig fast i læseren.
På bogens bagside står der, at det er en arbejdspladsroman fra det 22. århundrede. Alligevel præsenterer den et nutidigt, socialrealistisk billede af den ansatte, som forventes at tilbede sin arbejdsplads som en helligdom og fastholde tempoet i et evigt accelererende hamsterhjul for at “vækste”, effektivisere, udvikle og skabe konkurrencedygtighed. ‘De ansatte’ kan – med skildringen af et meget genkendeligt billede af det moderne arbejdsliv – læses som er en skarp kritik af samfundets evindelige og hovedløse jagt på mere, bedre, større.
Der er noget foucauldiansk over Olga Ravns beskrivelse af det produktive, disciplinerede individ, og den ansattes egen tilgang til verden og livet er da også, at enhver tanke og handling skal være produktiv og gavne samfundet.
Jeg skriver meget mere på Book me up, Scotty! her: https://bookmeupscotty.blogspot.com/2... , men hvis ikke du orker at læse mere fra min hånd, så skynd dig i stedet ud og få fat i Olga Ravns tankevækkende roman, som jeg anbefaler af hele mit menneskelige (eller menneskelignende?) hjerte.
På bogens bagside står der, at det er en arbejdspladsroman fra det 22. århundrede. Alligevel præsenterer den et nutidigt, socialrealistisk billede af den ansatte, som forventes at tilbede sin arbejdsplads som en helligdom og fastholde tempoet i et evigt accelererende hamsterhjul for at “vækste”, effektivisere, udvikle og skabe konkurrencedygtighed. ‘De ansatte’ kan – med skildringen af et meget genkendeligt billede af det moderne arbejdsliv – læses som er en skarp kritik af samfundets evindelige og hovedløse jagt på mere, bedre, større.
Der er noget foucauldiansk over Olga Ravns beskrivelse af det produktive, disciplinerede individ, og den ansattes egen tilgang til verden og livet er da også, at enhver tanke og handling skal være produktiv og gavne samfundet.
Jeg skriver meget mere på Book me up, Scotty! her: https://bookmeupscotty.blogspot.com/2... , men hvis ikke du orker at læse mere fra min hånd, så skynd dig i stedet ud og få fat i Olga Ravns tankevækkende roman, som jeg anbefaler af hele mit menneskelige (eller menneskelignende?) hjerte.
August 17, 2021
This was a "meh" for me, even though it was shortlisted for the Booker International in 2021. The story seemed to be told in an intentionally obtuse, indirect, opaque fashion, without any apparent necessary reason. The bulk of the novel is a series of brief statements (ranging from a single sentence to not more than about 1 1/2 pages) made during interviews, but only the witnesses' statements are provided in the book (not the questions asked by the interviewers), causing the statements to contain lots of "You ask . . ." and "You say . . ." in order to convey the interviewers' purpose and words. I was about 40 pages in to this very short 136-page story before I began to get any sense of who the people being interviewed were, where they were and where the story is set, why they were being interviewed and about what, etc. Until then I had no idea what was going on beyond the corporate-speak jargon-y one-paragraph introduction that says in part: The following statements were collected over a period of 18 months, during which time the committee interviewed the employees with a view to gaining insight into how they related to the objects and the rooms in which they were placed. I was increasingly irritated as more of the backstory was revealed; it felt like the author intentionally withheld information from me in order to build suspense, but the overall trajectory of the story seemed very predictable to me and the built-up suspense was a fizzle for me.
Here's my take on the plot, in a more straight-forward chronological telling than that contained in the book.
Meanwhile, there are a goodly number of things thrown into the story that are never explained. These include: what the "objects" actually are; why some people like to imagine putting the "objects" into their mouths; what an "add-on" is and the purpose to which it is put; who or what is "hanging" in a room and why; why some cadets and officers have been ejected from the spaceship and to where. As a reader, I typically enjoy doing the work of understanding the story and working out meaning for myself where an author alludes to something unexplained, but I do hope there is an actual reason for the allusions, and I didn't find that here.
Here's my take on the plot, in a more straight-forward chronological telling than that contained in the book.
Meanwhile, there are a goodly number of things thrown into the story that are never explained. These include: what the "objects" actually are; why some people like to imagine putting the "objects" into their mouths; what an "add-on" is and the purpose to which it is put; who or what is "hanging" in a room and why; why some cadets and officers have been ejected from the spaceship and to where. As a reader, I typically enjoy doing the work of understanding the story and working out meaning for myself where an author alludes to something unexplained, but I do hope there is an actual reason for the allusions, and I didn't find that here.
March 16, 2023
Ontological indoctrination
Soundtrack:
Butterfly Caught - Massive Attack
Black Milk - Massive Attack
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This is the story of wild events happening among the partly human, partly non-human crew of a spaceship whose venture, workings, purpose are entirely unknown but for a cornucopia of testimonies about the daily life, observations, suggestions, dissenting views of the crew members regarding themselves, the other group, the uncanny items they have collected on the surface of a recently(?) discovered planet. A definitely disquieting environment to work in.
Here are a few of the interrogations popping up in my mind as I was reading:
- Is this business venture about designing inquisitive evaluation models, elusive management strategies and nudge systems in workplaces?
- Is it a facade meant to allow the business venture to imitate humans by collecting exclusive data throughout tasks assigned arbitrarily to the workers, human or human-looking?
- Is it a series of tricks to compensate the lack of human bounds, sense of belonging, the uprootedness of workers in the void of space?
- Is this book about the fundamental isolation of employees within business structures? the reification of labour? the illustration of a fundamental definition of life?
Be that as it may, the rules of this environment, the implausible scheme behind the life-contracts, the weirdly self-effacing, or inept directorship of such a project tend to make me see the whole story as a little too demanding of me concerning the suspension of disbelief... hence the 3.5/5, rounded down to 3, this time.
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Also see:
Палата № 6
The Body Snatchers
Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited
Colony, Ubik and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
Marionettes, Inc. and The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Solaris
Other fiction:
The SCP Foundation
Games:
Portal
Films:
Ex Machina
Metropolis (2001, Rintarō)
THX 1138
Cube
2001: A Space Odyssey
The Eighth Passenger/Alien
Moon
Soundtrack:
Butterfly Caught - Massive Attack
Black Milk - Massive Attack
-----
This is the story of wild events happening among the partly human, partly non-human crew of a spaceship whose venture, workings, purpose are entirely unknown but for a cornucopia of testimonies about the daily life, observations, suggestions, dissenting views of the crew members regarding themselves, the other group, the uncanny items they have collected on the surface of a recently(?) discovered planet. A definitely disquieting environment to work in.
Here are a few of the interrogations popping up in my mind as I was reading:
- Is this business venture about designing inquisitive evaluation models, elusive management strategies and nudge systems in workplaces?
- Is it a facade meant to allow the business venture to imitate humans by collecting exclusive data throughout tasks assigned arbitrarily to the workers, human or human-looking?
- Is it a series of tricks to compensate the lack of human bounds, sense of belonging, the uprootedness of workers in the void of space?
- Is this book about the fundamental isolation of employees within business structures? the reification of labour? the illustration of a fundamental definition of life?
Be that as it may, the rules of this environment, the implausible scheme behind the life-contracts, the weirdly self-effacing, or inept directorship of such a project tend to make me see the whole story as a little too demanding of me concerning the suspension of disbelief... hence the 3.5/5, rounded down to 3, this time.
------
J'insiste, je n'aime pas y aller. J'ai toujours besoin de les toucher, même si je ne le veux pas. Ils utilisent un langage qui m'anéantit, quand j'y vais. Ce langage consiste en ce qu'ils sont nombreux, qu'ils ne sont pas un seul, que chacun d'eux est le modèle répété de tous.'
--------
Also see:
Палата № 6
The Body Snatchers
Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited
Colony, Ubik and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
Marionettes, Inc. and The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Solaris
Other fiction:
The SCP Foundation
Games:
Portal
Films:
Ex Machina
Metropolis (2001, Rintarō)
THX 1138
Cube
2001: A Space Odyssey
The Eighth Passenger/Alien
Moon
December 23, 2021
Reading this book reminds me of walking into an art gallery to see an installation that’s been praised as beyond sublime and utterly profound by critics, who like lemmings, couldn’t admit that what they were looking at was simply shit smeared across the walls for fear of being ostracized by other critics.
September 23, 2021
I’m not sure what I’ve just read. Like a space opera about the tediousness of corporate life, relayed through disjointed monologues?
It’s the 22th century and this is late late capitalism. Human and humanoids face themselves and each other, and the strange objects the found on the planet New Discovery. The purpose of the work on the ship is unclear but the structure and hierarchy is.
It seems that our humanity doesn’t make us the most efficient of employees. Some question it all. Some miss what they shouldn’t miss, yearn for something. Others keep their cards close to their chests. At times the book captures the half-thoughts that appear to use between dreams and awakening.
Plot here is stripped to the bare necessities. Just subjects and objects and the feedback loop.
It’s the 22th century and this is late late capitalism. Human and humanoids face themselves and each other, and the strange objects the found on the planet New Discovery. The purpose of the work on the ship is unclear but the structure and hierarchy is.
It seems that our humanity doesn’t make us the most efficient of employees. Some question it all. Some miss what they shouldn’t miss, yearn for something. Others keep their cards close to their chests. At times the book captures the half-thoughts that appear to use between dreams and awakening.
Plot here is stripped to the bare necessities. Just subjects and objects and the feedback loop.
February 15, 2022
I really didn't read anything about this book before I started, so I went in expecting Kafka and ended up with scifi! Humans and humanoids are employed on ship called the Six-Thousand, and they have also taken in some objects from a nearby planet. The creators, unnamed, have attempted to give the humans what they perceive them as needing - connection, seratonin, comfort - but can someone/thing nonhuman ever fully understand humanity in that sense? The entire very short novel is told in interview transcripts, most less than a page, so it is a short albeit bizarre reading experience. Much is unfolded but I won't spoil it for the reader.
This was on the long but not shortlist for the International Booker Prize; it was indeed on the shortlist for 2021. It's the fourth from the shortlist that I've read, and I'm surprised by the preference for shorter works! I read this in one setting while getting my oil changed.
The translator, Martin Aitken, is known to me for his work with Hanne Ostavik and Karl Ove Knaussgard.
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This was on the long but not shortlist for the International Booker Prize; it was indeed on the shortlist for 2021. It's the fourth from the shortlist that I've read, and I'm surprised by the preference for shorter works! I read this in one setting while getting my oil changed.
The translator, Martin Aitken, is known to me for his work with Hanne Ostavik and Karl Ove Knaussgard.
.
August 19, 2021
Vague in the wrong places. About aliens, yes, there should always be something vague and unexplained, otherwise you're only writing about the exotic. But the vagueness about the ship itself really disappointed me. A shame. I was so stoked to read this, too. Oh well.
All that said, maybe I'll come back to this in the future. Give it another chance.
All that said, maybe I'll come back to this in the future. Give it another chance.
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