In 2023, the Worker as Futurist Project supported 13 rank-and-file Amazon workers to write short, speculative fiction about The World After Amazon. The result is the book featured on this website.
Since it was founded in 1994, Amazon has presented itself as a benevolent force in our world, “revolutionizing” many areas of life and the economy, from books and media to robotics and logistics, from groceries and electronics to internet services and much, much more.
The corporation promises to bring us a utopian future of consumer convenience. But its workers pay the price, often toiling in dystopian conditions to generate profit so great their boss was able to finance his own private space program.
Companies like Amazon are indeed shaping the future of humanity, but the workers who generate its wealth have no say in that future.
The Worker as Futurist Project aims to support workers to tell their own stories, dream their own dreams, and reclaim the collective power to shape the future, in solidarity with the workers and communities around the world that are rising up to challenge Amazon.
In Ibrahim Alsahary’s “The Iron Uprising,” robots and humans come together in common struggle… and in love. Cory Gluck’s “Thalia in Albios” depicts one woman’s journey through a dystopian future, from terrified housecleaner to fearless revolutionary. What could go wrong if scientists tried to artificially enhance the empathy that people have lost in an age of techno-isolation? In Dartagnan’s “Relentless” we find out.
In Anneth Chepkoech’s “Life After Amazon” a young migrant boy dreams of creating an online retail platform that respects and values workers like his father. Pearl Cecil Sigur Ramsey’s “ANYBODY HOME?” presents a podcast from the end of the world, where corporations can even exploit screams of rebellion.
Several writers chose to remain anonymous. “Forever on the Clock” tells the story of a worker who quits Amazon only to discover the prison where he is being held looks very familiar… In “The Dark Side of Convenience” workers are kept so busy working for Amazon they don’t realize the apocalypse the company is helping to create. After Amazon’s fall, a local ruler uses violence and fear to dominate the island of Zanjara. It’s up to his son to find “The Museum of Prime” and restore the balance.“New Entry” takes us to the far future, where humanity has found the source of infinite energy, but is not yet free from the power of propaganda…
These nine stories are accompanied by an introduction to the project and essays by the coordinating team. Max Haiven writes of the figure of the alien and workers’ experiences of alienation.Sarah Olutola meditates with W.E.B. Dubois on the power of words to change the world. Graeme Webb reframes speculative writing as a form of play that opens the radical imagination. And Xenia Benivolski reflects on how, in both Communist and Capitalist societies, speculative fiction gives rise to subversive dreams.
English (US) ·