The Employees

The Six-Thousand Ship, a 22nd-century generation vessel, is staffed by humans and humanoids. After a set of strange objects is brought aboard from a planet called New Discovery, both groups begin to behave differently. The novel unfolds as 200-odd numbered witness statements taken by a workplace tribunal investigating the disruption. The statements pile into a labor dispute, a meditation on what counts as a life, and a quiet reckoning between the two crews about who deserves grief, sleep, and the right to refuse work. Ravn, a poet, writes the humanoid voices with the same devotional attention Ishiguro gives Klara.