Sci-Fi About Work: 5 Stories About Bosses, Bots and Replaceable Workers
The films, series and novels in our archive about the future of the job, ranked by score, with what each one got right about who watches, replaces and underpays the worker.
The best sci-fi about work we've reviewed is Severance, the Apple TV+ series about office staff whose memories are split between the job and home. Moon comes next, Duncan Jones's film about a lone miner on the Moon whose employer treats him as a renewable part. Then comes Sleep Dealer, about workers who operate robots across a border they can't cross.
All five picks are works we've reviewed, with a score, a Nearness reading and a prediction ledger. Taken together they point one way. The fiction rarely got the machine right. The brain chip, the clone tank, the cables in the arm and the green-eyed household robot are all still science fiction or early prototypes. What it got right was the employer: the monitoring, the replaceable worker and the arrangement in which the labour crosses and the body stays put. That is the pattern worth reading them for.
Two of the picks are comedies of a kind, one is a drama about a family and a robot, and one is a cold, low-budget film. They share a view that the interesting question about automation is who is in charge of it, not what it can do. For the companion pieces to this list, see sci-fi about AI and sci-fi about surveillance.
Mark and his colleagues sort numbers on the severed floor of Lumon Industries. Each has a chip that splits their memory in two, so the office self knows nothing of home. The chip is far off, and the nearest real research goes the other way, towards repairing memory rather than splitting it. The rest has arrived. In 2025 a survey found about a third of UK employers using "bossware" to watch staff, and Colorado added neural data to its privacy law in 2024. The show's real subject is consent: one self signs the contract and another has to live under it. Season two's plot is the weak part.
Sam Bell has a three-year contract on a lunar mining base, with only a company AI, GERTY, for company. The film's coldest idea is that waking a copy of the old worker is cheaper than flying out a new one. The clone tank is fiction. The replaceable worker, managed by an app and swapped out when worn down, is not. The non-disclosure agreement does the job of the jammer. The surprise is GERTY, who is the conscience and not the threat. A small film, a little too tidy at the end, and one of the sharpest on corporate AI.
In Tijuana, Memo hangs from cables in a factory hall and moves his arms to operate robots in a country he isn't allowed to enter. The cables are fiction, but the arrangement is arriving: Waymo's robotaxis can call on remote human "fleet response" agents, and 1X sells a home robot with bookable human "experts". Our ledger rates the central claim ARRIVING. The film is stiffly acted and the plot is blunt. The idea is the point: robots may be how the work gets done without letting the workers in.
In a version of the present, households buy "synths" to cook, clean and care. The first series is the strongest, a family drama about letting a machine into the house, and the show was right about the arguments that followed: adult content switched on privately, anger about jobs, and the debate over whether software can suffer. The hardware is the part that hasn't arrived. Figure says one of its humanoids ran 10-hour weekday shifts on a BMW production line, but with engineers nearby. Series two and three drift into conspiracy.
In a digital afterlife, dead customers pay for tiers of eternity and living "angels" serve them, ruled by star ratings. The upload is still science fiction. The ratings are not: in 2021 the UK Supreme Court noted that Uber tracked its drivers through star ratings and could end the relationship if they slipped. The weakest pick here, with the least about work, but it saw that the worker serving the customer is the one being scored. Our review gives it 5.6 for a brilliant joke stretched over four seasons.
What is the best sci-fi about work?
Severance is the highest-scoring work in our archive about the job itself, with an 8.4 and a Nearness reading of ARRIVING, because its workplace monitoring is standard kit. Moon is a close second at 8.3. Read both reviews before deciding: they come at the same question from opposite ends, one in an office and one on a mining base.
Are robots really taking jobs the way sci-fi predicted?
Not yet in the form shown. Our Humans review notes that real humanoids are in pilot projects, with engineers standing nearby. In Sleep Dealer, the arrangement that is arriving instead puts a remote person behind the machine. See the P(n) Board for how each claim stands.
Is workplace surveillance like *Severance* real?
Yes, in the form of software, not implants. A 2025 survey found about a third of UK employers using "bossware" to watch staff activity, and one in seven were recording or reviewing screens. The chip that splits memory is still decades away, if it comes at all.
Which sci-fi about work is most accurate?
On our ledgers, Moon and Severance are the best fits for the employer's behaviour, and Sleep Dealer for the structure of remote labour. None got the technology right, and all got the incentives right.