What to read, watch, and listen to if you lovedThe Employees
Olga Ravn · Book · 2022
If you loved The Employees, start with Severance (Dan Erickson, 2022) — a series on the same thread. Below: 4 films, 4 series and 2 podcasts, each matched to The Employees across media.
What hooked you in The Employees was the way the cold, crushing weight of corporate bureaucracy warps individual identity and human emotion.
Films on the same thread
2001: A Space Odyssey
Stanley Kubrick · Film · 1968
Shares 2 threads with The Employees: Existentialism, Artificial Intelligence.
Much like the staff reports in The Employees, this film uses the cold, sterile environment of space to examine the unsettling intersection of artificial intelligence and human evolution.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Daniel Scheinert · Film · 2022
Shares a thread with The Employees: Existentialism.
If the absurdist, doom-drenched atmosphere of The Employees resonated with you, this film offers a similarly surreal exploration of existence, identity, and the weight of living across multiple realities.
Alien
Ridley Scott · Film · 1979
Explores: Isolation, Paranoia, Corporate Greed.
The Employees captures the dread of a corporate-owned vessel, a feeling mirrored perfectly in this film where a crew faces lethal consequences due to the ruthless interests of their company.
Project Hail Mary
Phil Lord · Film · 2026
Explores: competence porn, amnesia, interspecies friendship.
While The Employees focuses on the existential malaise of a crew, this story shares the claustrophobic space setting and the struggle to maintain humanity while facing an unknown, alien reality.
Series on the same thread
Severance
Dan Erickson · Series · 2022
Shares 2 threads with The Employees: Existentialism, Dystopian Fiction.
This series acts as a direct spiritual companion to The Employees, exploring the dehumanizing effects of corporate control and the fragmentation of memory and identity within a workplace environment.
The Expanse
Mark Fergus · Series · 2015
Shares a thread with The Employees: Artificial Intelligence.
The Employees portrays a society defined by corporate hierarchy, a theme expanded upon here through the lens of a massive conspiracy that pits individual lives against powerful, uncaring interstellar institutions.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners
Rafał Jaki · Series · 2022
Explores: Cybernetic augmentation, Dystopian society, Mercenary life.
This series mirrors the existential anxiety found in The Employees, specifically regarding how cybernetic augmentation and a dystopian corporate landscape erode the fundamental sense of what it means to be human.
Devs
Alex Garland · Series · 2020
Shares a thread with The Employees: Existentialism.
Like the staff reports in The Employees, this narrative delves into the sinister nature of a modern corporation, focusing on the psychological cost of working for an entity that treats humans as commodities.
Podcasts on the same thread
The Truth
The Truth · Podcast · 2026
Shares a thread with The Employees: speculative fiction.
The Employees utilizes a fragmented, modular structure to tell its story, a technique this anthology mirrors by providing intimate, short-form glimpses into the strange and often unsettling human condition.
The Orphans
The Light and Tragic Company · Podcast · 2025
This audio drama captures the same themes of identity and emotional complexity found in The Employees, particularly through its focus on the blurred lines between artificial intelligence and human experience.
Keep exploring
Common questions
Is The Employees a standalone novel?
The Employees is a standalone work by Olga Ravn. The story chronicles the fate of the Six-Thousand Ship through a series of staff reports from human and humanoid crew members, focusing on their daily tasks and existential experiences during their voyage.
What is the tone of The Employees?
The Employees is described as a funny and doom-drenched existential nightmare. It uses a unique format of staff reports to detail the experiences of the crew aboard the Six-Thousand Ship, resulting in a riotously original narrative that explores the lives of both human and humanoid members.
Has The Employees received any literary recognition?
Yes, The Employees has received significant critical acclaim. It was shortlisted for both the International Booker Prize and the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize. Additionally, the book was longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award, highlighting its impact as a work of contemporary science fiction.
How is the narrative of The Employees structured?
The Employees is structured as a series of staff reports written by the human and humanoid crew members of the Six-Thousand Ship. These reports serve to document the daily tasks and complaints of the crew, creating an existential narrative about their life and work on the vessel.