Dodkin's Job-Jack Vance novelette

Dodkin's Job-Jack Vance novelette

Dodkin's Job is a 38/40 page novelette that was first published in October, 1959 in the magazine Amazing Science Fiction.  This is not really science fiction, fantasy or mystery but more of an ironic dystopian story with hints of Kafka and even Monty Python.  I loved this story and thought it was hilarious.  If you have ever worked in a big bureaucracy or have had to deal with one, you will probably identify with the main character who lives in a "big brother" like society where, "The population ordered their lives by schedule, classification and precedent."  Luke Grogatch is too rational for such a society so he keeps losing jobs and has now been demoted to the rating of "Flunky/ClassD/Unskilled."  If he gets demoted again he could end up being sent to the "Disorganized House" where he would be nonclassified and isolated with "criminals, idiots, children and proved Nonconformists." He decides to "submit slavishly to witless regulations" and begins his new job shoveling debris in a sewage system by hand using a shovel. All of his suggestions for improving the job are rejected, and the work seems meaningless. One day a new directive is announced ordering all employees to turn in their tools at a central warehouse at the end of the day and pick them up again each morning. This applies to Luke's shovel. He asks if he can purchase his own shovel and not have to turn it in each day but is told that the directive says "all tools" so that even a self purchased tool would not be exempt.  Luke complies at first. But after the lengthy out of the way trip to turn in the shovel, he has to wait in a long line with the whole process taking an hour and a half. This means he will have to spend three hours each day dropping off and picking up his shovel.  Luke decides to object by appealing to those who issued the directive but each supervisor claims he was simply following orders from above.  Luke continues appealing to those higher up in administration, assuming that he will finally encounter the person who is responsible for the directive.  His encounters with ineffective, irresponsible, uncaring bureaucratic officials develop into one of the funniest stories I've read in a long time.  Dodkin, by the way, is a person Luke meets later who has what Luke considers to be the ideal job.  I’ve read this story three times and rated it a 5.

 

Included in the Jack Vance collection titled Future Tense (1964)

Included in the Jack Vance collection titled Dust of Far Suns (1981)

Included in the Jack Vance collection titled When the Five Moons Rise (1992)

Included in the Jack Vance collection titled Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Works of Jack Vance, volume 1 (2010)

Included in the Jack Vance collection Moon Moth and Other Stories (20012 Spatterlight)