I have seen the future of unemployment—and it is not pretty. At least not in the fictionalized world of Margaret Atwood, novelist and poet, who has now penned a new series of e-chapters called Positron.
The serialized novel—put online by Byliner and available as an e-book—begins with an extraordinary idea, the backstory of the book’s events. In a future world that looks a lot like the US (or Atwood’s native Canada), there are so few good jobs that people will agree to serve half their lives as prisoners, if this arrangement will deliver employment and a steady income. The closed community of Consilience offers this promise, but with a significant catch. Every other month, half the citizens within Consilience’s walls reside in remodeled suburban homes, replete with appliances, comfy couches, TVs, and fresh linens. Each has a “civilian” job, servicing the prison or the town’s residents directly. Meanwhile, half the population lives in Positron, the prison that was once the main employer in the town—as it is again. Then each month people switch places. Citizens become prisoners in jumpsuits, but very well-fed and well-cared for prisoners who also do jobs within the jail’s walls. The town is marketed to its residents with the clever tagline of “Cons + Resilience = Consilience.”
In the novel, Consilience is held out as a model, one that is being spread around a country that is increasingly riven by the dangers of un- or under-employment. Outside Consilience, lawlessness is widespread. Roving bands of youths terrorize average people and steal whatever isn’t nailed down. Life is uncertain, violence pervasive.
The young couple at the center of the story has been unable to find real, permanent jobs (just temp positions, and then none at all). They can’t afford to get married or to have children without some other solution: that’s why they turn to Consilience and Positron. They are promised a life of full employment, work and shelter for the duration, and they jump at the chance.
Of course, what they don’t quite realize is that they’ve also signed their lives away to a system that controls them—utterly. Their movements are tracked and monitored by secret police, who hold the keys to life and death. They are manipulated by the forces running Consilience, by the business that hopes to turn the town into one big money-maker, even if that means selling prisoners’ body parts—or something equally sinister, but not necessarily clear as yet. Atwood has crafted some shocking situations for her trapped characters.
I’m hooked. I just hope this dystopic vision is not what we really eventually face in today’s world of perma-temps, job losses, and long-term un- and underemployment. Unemployment is relatively high in the US at 7.9 percent, and much worse elsewhere. The forces on our labor market have caused many jobs to go away, permanently, and jobs that are being created are not necessarily providing a living wage for Americans. Scholar Erin Hatton recently wrote in an opinion piece in the New York Times, “A quarter of jobs in America pay below the federal poverty line for a family of four ($23,050). Not only are many jobs low-wage, they are also temporary and insecure. Over the last three years, the temp industry added more jobs in the United States than any other…”
It’s becoming common knowledge that the structure of our economy has changed and will never be what it used to, in terms of employment figures and job stability.
One bright spot, looking back over Atwood’s brilliant prose: Though many of us may be “wage slaves,” we are luckily still a long way from turning ourselves into prisoners to “escape” unemployment.
Like other readers, I’m now eagerly awaiting the next installment in this serialized novel. (Atwood spoke with NPR about her decision to publish these chapters online here.)
MeredithInk 