The question
What do people do all day?
Science fiction has spent a century imagining machines that can do the work. It has spent far less time on the part that follows — the ordinary Tuesday afternoon of a person who is no longer needed.
This is a catalogue of the works that do answer it, and of the seven answers they keep arriving at. 13 books, 6 films and 4 television series, sorted by the shape of the answer rather than by quality, date or fame.
Of the twenty most-reviewed science fiction novels on Goodreads,two contain a functioning artificial general intelligence. One more bans it outright. The most-read science fiction in the language has largely declined to take up the question.
The seven answers
Every work here lands in one of these. The striking thing is how many authors, having removed material scarcity, immediately invent a replacement.
Enforced idleness
Everything is provided, so nothing is left to do — and that turns out to be unbearable.
4 worksNEW CURRENCYManufactured scarcity
The abundance is real, so a new scarcity gets invented to compete over.
5 worksGOOD PRPlay as vocation
Work becomes hobby, and the serious people go looking for risk on purpose.
2 worksSURPLUSObsolescence
The work goes, and standing goes with it.
2 worksSTILL OURSCare work persists
The tasks that survive are the ones that cannot be hurried.
2 worksSEE OWNERCapital captures it
Nothing is abolished. The gains are simply owned by someone.
5 worksALLOCATEDAssigned meaning
A system hands you a purpose, and it is sufficient.
3 works