BK · Book · 2004 · novel
Cloud Atlas
David Mitchell
The machines
Fabricants — engineered human servers, grown for the job.
What people do all day
Sonmi-451 works nineteen-hour shifts at Papa Song's dinery, engineered to want nothing else, sustained on Soap, promised retirement at twelve years' service. The promise is a lie and the retirement is a slaughterhouse.
Pattern
Capital captures it — Nothing is abolished. The gains are simply owned by someone.
Note
Only one of the six nested narratives is relevant here, and it is the sharpest depiction anywhere of labour designed from scratch to be content with itself.
Same answer, different work
- Metropolis · Film, 1927
- Stand on Zanzibar · Book, 1968
- Manna · Book, 2003
- Sleep Dealer · Film, 2008
- The Windup Girl · Book, 2009
- All Systems Red · Book, 2017
- Blade Runner 2049 · Film, 2017
- Autonomous · Book, 2017