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 eight answers they keep arriving at. 22 books, 6 films and 4 television series, sorted by the shape of the answer rather than by quality, date or fame.
Of the hundred most-reviewed science fiction novels on Goodreads,17 contain a functioning artificial general intelligence — and 12 show you a Tuesday afternoon. The genre is full of artificial minds. It is nearly empty of artificial economies.
The answers exist. They are scattered across a hundred books with no reason for any reader to connect them, and the best of them — Clarke in 1953, Le Guin in 1974 — are ranked 51st and 71st.
The eight 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.
6 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.
3 worksSURPLUSObsolescence
The work goes, and standing goes with it.
4 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.
6 worksPOSTEDAllocated labour
A system decides what you will do, and people comply — sometimes willingly.
2 worksINTERNALISEDAssigned meaning
A system hands you a purpose, and it is sufficient.
4 works