Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [2212]

Emery shrugged. It startled me that she could be indifferent about such a thing, but she seemed to be. “Some people think it’s a good job,” she said. “Last driver we had, he used to do something with computers. I don’t know what. His company went out of business and he got a job driving us. I think he liked it.” — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 2212

Note

The horror here is delivered flatly. Emery shrugs, and the narrator’s own alarm (‘It startled me that she could be indifferent’) is left unprocessed; then comes an anecdote about a former white-collar worker who drifted into slave-driving as a step down in status and apparently enjoyed it. The pre-terror of Butler’s world is that it needs no monsters, only labor markets — and the childlike understatement ‘I think he liked it’ lands harder than any condemnation.