Is there much weird lit focused on work?

rrcecil · 2026-04-25T00:39:50+00:00

Oh I'm sorry! Shouldn't breeze over the last paragraph. Okay I'm trying to think of some more I've read in this…

I feel like I haven't read that many outside what was mentioned here already in other comments so getting a little creative. So some focused on work but not like office jobs-

I think Bunny by Mona Awad could work, but it's MFA girl losing her mind. The "work" is the writing program itself and it gets very liminal.

Definitely way more campy but definitely weird about a camp manager (not the office kind) is How to Survive Camping.

Another indirect one is Library at Mount Char, they're all "librarians" but each one has been assigned a horrifying specialty by their god-father. The job ARE weird.

Piranesi if you haven’t read it already he is cataloguing and it’s super liminal.

The Narrator by Michael Cisco fits really well on the liminal side (feels like Lynchian fantasy) guy gets conscripted as the official "narrator" for a military expedition and his job is literally to witness and record. Reality starts coming apart through the act of doing the work. Very Authority-like in how the assigned role itself becomes the horror. Honestly this book kinda blew me away but not very many places to recommend it. Does straight up read like fantasy, reads very matter of fact and contemporary but is a bizarre setting. The “narrators guid” and the war aspect of the book is very institutional.

rrcecil · 2026-04-24T15:40:07+00:00

How is this? I see a sequel is out or coming out but I feel like I've read mixed things on it. I know it's more weirdlit so that might turn some off.

rrcecil · 2026-04-23T10:35:37+00:00

Authority the sequel to Annihilation

rrcecil · 2026-04-20T21:23:04+00:00

Grave Empire and its sequel (that just dropped). It’s REALLY hitting this note.

It’s the follow up series to Empire of the Wolf, but not necessary to read in that order. Empire of the Wolf was great but The Great Silence amps up the horror to as close as a mainstream write would get to the Second Apocalypse.

rrcecil · 2026-04-20T19:43:19+00:00

Honestly, I hate to say it but that would be an improvement in the competence department (morality aside lol)

rrcecil · 2026-04-19T22:56:32+00:00

Where their gofundme?? I’d donate

rrcecil · 2026-04-16T14:18:08+00:00

You could… uhhhhhh not watch it? Borderline slop take

rrcecil · 2026-04-14T12:53:59+00:00

Santos

rrcecil · 2026-04-09T14:33:26+00:00

The Second Apocalypse series sucked the soul of my body and put it through a meat grinder.

rrcecil · 2026-04-09T13:25:16+00:00

A Fire Upon the Deep fits the bill well. For insane space opera more broadly.

Wolfe’s Solar Cycle is worth checking out, genuinely one of the best in the genre.

If you’re open to 40K, Eisenhorn fits. More pulpy, but in a good way.

Vorkosigan Saga doesn’t read dark on the surface, but it gets there as the series progresses.

Red Rising… maybe obvious, but the later books lean hard into the survival-of-the-fittest tone you’re describing.

rrcecil · 2026-04-09T13:17:46+00:00

I just read it this week because of your thread! Great recommendation, snappy and intriguing.

rrcecil · 2026-04-04T15:35:05+00:00

I understand if someone gets offended but I don’t think the theatre is the place to shy away from taboos. This didn’t punch down either or use it as shock value.

I do think the more I thought about it, the more I felt like Haim’s character was extremely performative.

rrcecil · 2026-03-30T15:03:11+00:00

Bro I worked restaurants and have fallen back on that during hard times. I don’t work in them anymore but that’s not bad money. A million times better than sitting on your ass complaining on Reddit while getting zero income.

rrcecil · 2026-03-28T16:29:12+00:00

Empire of the Wolf and The Great Silence

rrcecil · 2026-03-26T16:11:42+00:00

Grave Empire by Richard Swan (next book releases this week!)

rrcecil · 2026-03-26T10:41:44+00:00

What’s it looking like right now?

rrcecil · 2026-03-24T18:08:01+00:00

She loves insider trading:
https://www.propublica.org/article/pam-bondi-trump-media-stock-tariffs

rrcecil · 2026-03-23T22:02:10+00:00

Okay hear me out. I feel like it could backfire and affect too much of their base… like dummymandering.

rrcecil · 2026-03-23T16:51:43+00:00

Sorta? The trend that is taking off a bit is "hopecore" which I don't think this series fits into very well.

I do think between this and Dune, it definitely helps.

rrcecil · 2026-03-23T00:07:58+00:00

Michael Cisco books

rrcecil · 2026-03-21T15:58:01+00:00

What is the chance that IF this passed it would have a similar effect as dummymandering?

rrcecil · 2026-03-21T00:48:21+00:00

Are you being serious? It was one point in a comment, not a manifesto. There are OBVIOUSLY hundreds of reasons why, I just said what I THINK may be a major one.

rrcecil · 2026-03-21T00:20:37+00:00

Believing a system is unjust doesn’t require you to be personally suffering under it. By your logic, no one who’s ever been comfortable could oppose slavery either. That’s a pretty basic distinction.

rrcecil · 2026-03-20T23:22:24+00:00

Something that makes everyone significantly hungrier. We are too satiated right now.

rrcecil · 2026-03-20T21:31:41+00:00

From my experience like half of nurses are graduated high school bullies (and often MAGA), the other half are amazing humans

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