The Situation

So, yeah, having worked in the corporate world for 12 years, and 3 years working in IT for academia... that was pretty brilliant.

A nice take on office politics from one of the pioneers of the New Weird movement.

After the narrator returns to work from a two week vacation, he finds that things have changed at the workplace - one of the new employees is angling for his job, his manager is being sidelined by the higher-ups in the company and his best friends - one of whom recently took a new job in Human Resources - seem reluctant to associate with him. So far, so mundane: except his job involves designing beetles and fish with which to teach school children, his manager is made of plastic and paper and has a bad habit of catching fire when angry, and the friend of his that moved to Human Resources seems to be turning himself into a bear ...

This was a delightful short story to read. While there's plenty of bizarre imagery and ideas going on (trust me when I say I haven't mentioned the half of it), the core of the piece is the narrator's struggles at work, struggles that will surely be familiar to anybody who's had to work for long in any office environment. And VanderMeer gets this spot on, capturing the narrator's sense of loneliness and alienation perfectly in just a few dozen pages. That doesn't mean the stranger elements are just a gimmick, either - while the backstory is never fleshed out, the details are intriguing, hinting at alien invasion and the collapse of the old social order.

This is actually the first work of VanderMeer's I've read - it won't be the last.

Originally available at: http://sf-fantasy-books.blogspot.com

***
At lunch, we would sneak out behind the company building with a blanket and sit on the little hill there, looking out onto a ravaged landfill full of the bright skeletons of vultures and then, beyond that, the city in all its strange mix of menace and vulnerability. The grass was yellowing rather than dead. A wiry tree stood on the hill at that time. We would ear crackers and old cans of shredded meat, the smell in that context almost unbearably tantalizing.

After lunch, we would unlock the glass cases containing our beetles. Their shining green-and-crimson carapaces would open like the lids of eccentric jewelry boxes to reveal their golden wings, and we would release them into the world.

Those beetles contained every joyous thing we had ever known, and we loved to watch them fly out into the distance.

...

I can remember Leer saying once, "This hill makes me happy."
***

"The Situation” is my first foray into the writing of Jeff Vandermeer, a multiple award-winning author and one of the progenitors of the New Weird avant-garde literary movement. Vandermeer’s own definition of the subgenre from the introduction to the New Weird anthology (Tachyon Publications, 2008) exposes as crucial some of the following elements: (1) urban, secondary-world fiction based on the complex real-world models; (2) subversion of the romanticism usually found in traditional fantasy; (3) may have elements of both sf&f; (4) acute awareness of the modern world and (5) the writing style and writing techniques may include elements of surreal, postmodern and transgressive horror for the tone, style and effect. I found all this to be blatantly true concerning this novelette.

The Situation’s intent is simple and is revealed in the author’s acknowledgements: “I dedicate The Situation to all the passive-aggressive emotional vampires,…and incompetent power-abusing managers currently lurking among unsuspecting office workers everywhere.” We follow an anonymous corporate worker in his everyday life in a weird alternative world’s company. The Company dabbles dabbles with what we would see as biotechnology – producing all kinds of beetles, worms, grubs man-sized fish and other distorted fauna for all kind of purposes (usually in place of this world’s computer technologies and pharmaceutics). It is a story about modern workplace relations – as flawed and dysfunctional as they are. The Company’s interior is the one safe haven that the employees know. Hope is buried in the past along with all the happy memories and family photos. Our worker’s days revolve around pleasing his superiors and finding himself more and more excluded from the people he works with and therefore dealing with growing hostility and isolation.

This novelette reminds me uncannily of Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” with an added pinch of Marvyn Peake’s “Gormenghast”. Vandermeer has a lyrical approach to writing, using a lot of metaphors and allegories, and sure knows how to make you sympathize with the main protagonist. His ideas are just twisted enough for me to like and to remind me to read some of his other works – I’ve heard a lot of good things about his collection of short stories gathered in “City of Saints and Madmen”.

To conclude, this is a kind of story I would recommend to grown-ups or those remotely familiar with office work...for those under 25 (this age limit is highly arbitrary!) I would say to wait a few years so you can full appreciate Vandermeer's allegory of the office life.

3,5/5 ( )

“All any of us had were the relationships at the company. What waited for us each night in the city did not bear describing.”

In The Situation we are introduced to a devastated world that is sharp-edged and cruel—a distinct contrast to our narrator, Savante, who has a genuine sense of whimsy and compassion as he explains to us his situation at “the company.” As we are led through a workplace rife with office politics, the stakes grow increasingly higher revealing a world that is horrific, fantastic, and, at times, touching.

This story is surreal but also very intimate. It broke my heart in places, it made me laugh in others. It is a beautiful, brilliant work, and definitely something to read carefully, to savor every word. This is not one to rush through.

For anyone familiar with VanderMeer’s works I think this book will be an easy transition, however for newcomers don’t let the fantastically strange creations within distract you too much from the words between the lines where the real heart of the story lies.

That’s my .02 cents, at least. I hope you enjoy this one! ( )

http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/files/Situation-Wired-Final.pdf

Paper-thin management style really bugs me.

http://freesf.blogspot.com/2008/03/situation-jeff-vandermeer.html ( )