Another post I’ve been waiting to have the time for — I wanted to write about this alongside Terrace Story, and to consider their take on what we might call “literary science fiction” — but time marches on, so just very quickly:
I wanted to like The Employees more. I did enjoy it, and the parts that are good, especially the stuff about bodies, are really very good. Part of what spurred me to write this post is that I saw Poor Things last night, and it reminded me of some of the questions raised in The Employees; both are interested in what it means to be human, especially in relation to sex, love, and philosophizing. And of course, I love a short book.
But I found myself thinking that there is something predictable in both the plot and the voice; that there’s a way that AI is imagined as speaking that is surprisingly consistent, and it would be interesting to think about it more alongside ChatGPT (are they similar? do they influence each other?). I’m especially curious if what I perceive as a kind of melancholy is a projection of the human author’s fears or sadness about humanity.
Kasia Reads 