5 Incisive Dystopian Books on the Economy and Work Culture

Imagine a world where algorithms form the structure of society. Your ability to get jobs, find a romantic partner, your friends are based on your “number.” It’s a world where “The Store,” an Amazon-like company, anticipates your needs and wants and sends you products without you having to order them. Plus everyone’s surname is derived from their father or mother, depending on their gender. That’s the world that Peter Jobless is living in. He fixes “useless” robots, but when his score dips below 10 (on a scale from 1 to 100), his life starts to get a lot more difficult. When he receives an item he categorically does not want, he goes on a mission to return the item to The Store. It’s an incisive commentary on a world reliant on algorithms and social points as the organizing principle. Here’s my full review at Broad Street Review.

After a failed uprising known as the “Disgraceful Events,” the State has mandated that everyone must appeal to the Gate for any and all matters. A queue begins to form of people trying to get help with health care, housing, and more. But the Gate never opens, so the line just gets longer and longer. When Yehia gets shot for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, he cannot get the bullet removed because as far as the State is concerned, there are no bullets. So Yenia gets in line to appeal to the State. The Queue is a scathing indictment of the bureaucratic and oppressive state.

Gish Jen envisions a world organized based on production and consumption. In AutoAmerica, the Netted produce and get all the advantages of life — living on dry land, university, and more. The Surplus live on swampland (or worse water) and are expected to consume and gain points for more consumption. And the split “happens” to be on racial lines. Homes are equipped with Aunt Nettie, an Alexa on steroids, that monitors all. The story focuses on a Surplus family: Grant, a former professor; Eleanor, a still-practicing lawyer; and their daughter Gwen, with the golden arm. When her pitching talent is recognized, she gets recruited for the Olympics and enrolled in Net University. It’s a story of parents having to learn to let their daughter make mistakes away from home. It’s about generational conflicts and resistance — Gwen wants to benefit from high society as her mother has made a career (and life) of fighting against the segregation and oppression of society.

Temporary envisions a world where jobs become our identity. So if you are a temporary worker, like the unnamed narrator, you are constantly jumping from job to job, changing yourself completely. The narrator finds herself in a variety of jobs, from window cleaner, assassin’s assistant, and even mother, in the search for Steadiness. She learns to smoke for one job, knowing she’ll have to unlearn it for another. It’s a commentary on gig culture and the role of women in U.S. working society.

The Factory presents a critique of our collective working lives. Three workers in a factory in an unnamed Japanese city have very specialized jobs: one proofreads, one studies moss, and one shreds things. Soon their seemingly pointless jobs become more than just jobs as the factory expands and becomes all-consuming. Where does work and where does other life occur?