For as long as we’ve had literature, we’ve had literature about the near and far future. There’s a lot of things that keep developing in unexpected ways as technology moves forward, so it’s safe to say that we’ve reached a point where we can probably rule out some of the weird ideas that have been presented over the decades. One thing where the idea couldn’t be creative or crazy enough was what jobs we’d be doing in the future. Because yes, in the future we’ll still be working 40 hours a week to make a boss happy and hopefully get paid enough to buy a tiny house.
Take a look at some of the predictions that have been made in science fiction literature about the jobs we’ll be doing, and let’s see if it’s still a reasonable option or not.
Layout Co-Ordinator
In Philip K. Dick’s work The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch the main character works for a company creating layouts. The layouts are a sort of virtual reality platform that helps people space out properly when taking the right drug. Sadly in that virtual reality a character named Perky Pat rises up and creates his own religion, making the religious references ever so thinly veiled. But yeah, basically the main characters creates VR platforms that you can trip on.
Alien Translator
You know what’s going to be worse than aliens visiting Earth? Not being able to communicate with aliens visiting Earth. Ted Chiang thought the same, and that’s why he decided that In his book Story of Your Life the main character would be someone capable of communicating with aliens. And this all within the span of what I can only assume is a few weeks after the aliens first arrive on the planet!
Mechador
If you were thinking this is like Jason Statham where he basically plays matador to a meg, you’re not too far off. The book Auto-da-Fé by Roger Zelazny is about a mechador, which is basically a matador that fights charging android-like cars instead of good ol’ bulls or prehistoric megasharks. The reason for his weird job is that the plot of the book clearly establishes that people can be revived, so the Mechador can die a brutal death over and over again as part of their job.
Void Ship Pilot
Science fiction has a tendency to come up with weird stuff by just putting “void”, “space”, “intergalactic” or what have you in front of it. In The Void Captain’s Tale by Norman Spinrad, the ship’s pilot controls the ship through the sheer power of her being turned on. Not because of something that happened by accident – that’s how the ships were made.
Observer
If you’ve heard of the ancient astronaut theory, Hard to be a God by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky flips that entire concept around. Humanity starts visiting alien planets that haven’t evolved past the middle ages and people called observers have to, well, observe. Ironically, this book was written by Soviet writers and deals with the moral dilemma of an observer trying to actively intervene in a foreign culture because they’re doing something he doesn’t like. Somehow I feel like this entire book has never been more relevant than now.
Child Trader
Joanna Russ wrote a lovely piece of feminist science fiction called The Female Man where men and women no longer get along for some reason and women use the small boys they give birth to as a currency for trade – they keep the girls, of course. If we’re being honest, as bad as that sounds on paper, the world in that book is probably better off since there’s only two factions at war with each other.
