The Surreal Office

Weird Fiction by Jeff VanderMeer and Vernor Vinge Here is some required reading for those who feel stuck in a daily grind, or on the contrary, are dreaming about becoming a symbiotic whole with a cubicle. Jeff VanderMeer and Vernor Vinge are two very different writers in style and approach, but the subject matter is painfully familiar ("Office", "Office Space", Dilbert, you name it). In these short works of fiction, the same office life receives a refreshingly surreal makeover that you likely will never forget... or look at your job prospects in the same way again. (art courtesy David Fuhrer) Unless you work in a gorgeous environment like this (Google sets the trend, again), you may desire profound changes in your workplace. Read this story then, and be careful what you wish for: ---------------------------------------------- Jeff VanderMeer "The Situation" © 2008, PS Publishing --/ third place f novelette --/ wonder award --/ idea award --/ style award --/ emotion award Jeff VanderMeer is not a pirate (swashbuckler, filibustier, rogue), nor is he a squid researcher, or a mushroom grower (though some of his writings may suggest all that, given their ferocious weirdness). He is, however, a damn good writer, who can easily cram a juicy epic into a thin sliver of a book: in this case, a 50-page worth Situation. Somewhat reminiscent of Vernor Vinge's novella "The Cookie Monster", this particularly steamy slice of corporate Gormenghast for the economy-plagued America provides plenty of emotional harakiri and gut-spilling visual thrills... it crawls around the astonished reader like a misshapen beetle (complete with the grotesque patterns on its carapace and clockwork-sounding clicks). At any point in time this novella seems to have enough potential to be turned into a full-blown 500-page paperback slab, but Jeff VanderMeer never makes this "Alienation in the Workforce" any longer than it needs to be. He lets it lie where it may (using the long-forgotten art form of understatement) - and boy, does the whole thing curl around your subconscious in deliciously disturbing ways! Suffice it to say that anybody who's been slighted by the benefits-rich corporate culture, or has ever caught a whiff of something rotten emanating from the CEO's office (the Chairmen of the Board abide in a sort of a metaphysical tower and seem to be of insectoid, slug, or worse nature) - anybody who felt the foreboding of CHANGE ready to percolate down the managerial chain... anybody who was strangled creatively or artistically in the name of Almighty Routine... these readers would really appreciate the bizarre Kafka-esque environment of the "Situation", and may cherish it as a sort of confessional, akin to a conversation with a wise (if somewhat mischievous) priest at an altar. The words of wisdom seem to be "Get Out! While you can, and leave your red stapler behind" - but there is more to the particular kind of doom which Jeff VanderMeer carefully measures out. The unavoidable outcome of being fired seems almost a happy ending to a progression of humiliation and defeat. So in a way, this is a quest, only in reverse. The happy start of the story occurred somewhere during the peaceful "belonging" stage of being gainfully employed. But when the situation developed, everything turned into a bloody, fleshy, surreal set-up (think of "Existenz" movie, or J. G. Ballard's particularly weird nightmares). With the final page the reader can expect to be emotionally exhausted, greatly desiring more details, and only getting fifty pages worth of text. Kind of like Harlan Ellison's angriest (and most laconic) best. Good things come in small packages, indeed. Download the full text online here, read about the circumstances of how it was written in Jeff's interview on DRB, or order the book at PS Publishing site. ---------------------------------------------- Jeff VanderMeer "Secret Lives" (coll) © 2008, Prime Books --/ fourth place f collection --/ idea award --/ style award --/ humour award Speaking of Harlan Ellison's "angry candies", or his "From A to Z, in the Chocolate Alphabet", here we have a similarly delicious set - a short collection (little more than 100 pages) of themed stories, vignettes of the secret lives of various quite ridiculous, or utterly boring characters. This is a gauntlet thrown in the face of each of us: "Hey there, do YOU have a secret worth of writing about?" My completely uneducated guess would be that most people lead some sort of secret life, even if known only to the powers above. Admit it, or not, this is a voyarist bliss package, capable to illuminate your boring life with rays of unadulterated lunacy, even if said lunacy is only a product of Jeff VanderMeer's mind. This book takes my pick as the most intriguing and under-appreciated publishing event of the year (it even has a strange, unaccounted story on the other side of the cover). Don't try to search for it in your cavernous Borders store, and don't confuse this book with Jeff's previously-issued collection "Secret Life". You can order a copy through the Prime Books website. ---------------------------------------------- (art courtesy David Fuhrer, click to enlarge) Here is a reminder of what conceptual science fiction can do with the "office farce" sub-genre: Hugo award-winning 2003 novella by Vernor Vinge (written after the dot com crash, also in a pretty negative corporate and economic climate) ---------------------------------------------- Vernor Vinge "The Cookie Monster" © Analog, Oct 2003 --novella : 2004 Hugo Winner --novella : 2004 Locus Winner --novella : 2004 AnLab /3 --/ second place sf novella --/ wonder award --/ idea award --/ awesome scale Just like "The Situation", this haunting novella contains images of corporate hell worthy of Dilbert's worst. It certainly puts a stop to dreams of a cozy desk job in sunny California, grazing around the campus of some hip computer corporation. Instead of perks, freedom and stability the employees here get something quite different... and you get a sinking feeling from the moment the first email arrives in the story. This is a classic novella about the manipulation of reality; engaging, hilarious and deceptively simple: most of it happens inside a generic industrial park, with the main characters having a reckless adventure... by walking from one building to the other. Soon, however, the daily grind turns into a nightmare (and/or conspiracy) worthy of Kafka and Philip K. Dick. As our characters realize that they have become part of the biggest reality scam since "The Truman Show", they have nothing left to do but to shuffle around in a zombie-like fashion, hoping to "cool off" their thought processes, or trying to figure out the implications of the plot. A few years back, Vinge popularized the "singularity" concept, in which he predicted that humanity will be left in the dust in the wake of self-evolving software. This writer knows how to handle the vastness of concept, how to tighten the plot with the velvet gloves of the reader's own fears and paranoias. It all starts with an email (just like the good old "Matrix" starts with a call on Neo's phone)... but soon the workplace transforms into something else, and time itself is bending out of shape. ---------------------------------------------- (art courtesy David Fuhrer, click to enlarge) Also Read: "Surreal Art Update" Interview with Jeff VanderMeer

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