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De ansatte
144 pages
A chilling, fragmented exploration of what it means to be alive, told through the sterile lens of a corporate performance review.
What it feels like
Reading this novella feels like sifting through the debris of a doomed corporate experiment. Told entirely through brief, anonymous witness statements, the narrative moves at a brisk, compulsive pace, even as the atmosphere grows increasingly claustrophobic and eerie. The prose is a masterclass in juxtaposition, using the cold, sterile language of human resources to express profound, aching poetry about longing, memory, and the sensory details of a lost Earth. It is a quietly devastating experience that sits heavy in the chest, wrapping a sharp critique of capitalist productivity inside a melancholic sci-fi mystery. This is a perfect match for readers who devour weird, philosophical fiction and appreciate stories where the deepest emotional truths are found in the spaces between fragmented, clinical observations.
- Mood
- eerie
- sterile
- claustrophobic
- quietly devastating
- Tone
- clinical
- melancholic
- poetic
- detached
- probing
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- alienation of labor · nature of consciousness · longing for connection · grief for the natural world · bureaucratic absurdity
- The writing
- Sparse and fragmented, it weaponizes the sterile language of HR bureaucracy to deliver startling moments of poetic longing.
- The arc
- Begins with detached, clinical observation and slowly descends into a profound, aching existential grief.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love weird, philosophical sci-fi novellas and find beauty in cold, fragmented narratives about the human condition.
Content notes
- existential dread
- isolation
- death
- mild body horror
About the book
"Is this a human problem? If so, I'd like to keep it. The crew of the Six-Thousand Ship consists of those who were born, and those who were made. Those who will die, and those who will not. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew is perplexed to find itself becoming deeply attached to them, and human and humanoid employees alike start aching for the same things: warmth and intimacy. Loved ones who have passed. Shopping and child-rearing. Our shared, far-away Earth, which now only persists in memory. Gradually, the crew members come to see their work in a new light, and each employee is compelled to ask themselves whether they can carry on as before-- and what it means to be truly living. Structured as a series of witness statements compiled by a workplace commission, Olga Ravin's crackling prose is as chilling as it is moving, as exhilarating as it is foreboding. Wracked by all kinds of longing, The employees probes into what it means to be human, emotionally and ontologically, while simultaneously delivering an overdue critique of a life governed by work and the logic of productivity."--
Description from Open Library.
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