Can the chase for productivity ever go too far? Afronauts podcast host and debut author Jill Tew explores an inescapable work culture in her dystopian sci-fi debut The Dividing Sky. In 2460 America under LifeCorp rule, Proxys are the only way for Uppers to experience life from behind their work desks, and Lowers are relegated to working endless hours. Liv, an EmoProxy who can capture emotional experiences and transfer them to her clients, gets an undeniable offer: if she can capture a memory from the Outerlands beyond the nation’s border, she will be paid enough to get her and her friends away from the never-ending cycle of Proxy work. We spoke with Tew about becoming the first Black sci-fi author to be published under David and Nicola Yoon’s Joy Revolution imprint, and about exploring the pressures of productivity.
What was your experience like working with David and Nicola? What did it mean to you to be the first Black sci-fi author under Joy Revolution?
It’s almost like the perfect combination, because David has the sci-fi and speculative chops, and Nicola has the romance chops. Between the two of them, and my editor, Bria Ragin, who’s also a really shrewd romance editor, we’ve gotten this book to exactly where it needs to be. It’s been interesting thinking about the differences between romantasy and sci-fi romance. I think in a lot of ways, the two are linked. Sci-fi, and the future in general, has this reputation for being this chrome-plated, cold, sterile environment. And the idea of love blooming in the midst of that has always intrigued me, so it’s been fun to expand on that and explore that with this team: to help them lean more into the chrome-plated android aesthetic, and have them help me lean into the swoony, angsty yearning of romance.
Where did you start when it came to dystopian worldbuilding? What were some influences that inspired this world?
I was working some very high-demand, high-intensity corporate jobs, and I found myself daydreaming about ways to save myself time. So I would pay other people to deliver groceries or care for my dog. And I noticed that when I would get those hours of time saved, I would never use them for things that were fulfilling for me. I would always use them for more work—because there was always more work to do. When I began thinking through my story, I found myself wondering about a world where technology has advanced to the point where we can outsource pretty much any aspect of our lives. We could outsource childcare and relationships. I could pay a proxy to go on a date with my husband’s proxy and then come back and let me know how the date went. If you can pay people to go read books for you, look at blades of grass and sunsets for you, at what point would somebody say enough is enough? I don’t want to just keep optimizing for work. That was the kernel that started the whole idea for this world where you’re outsourcing elements of your life, because we’ve decided that productivity is the most important metric of a person’s worth.
The function of Proxys is for other people to experience life for those who are too busy working. What makes Liv’s ability as an EmoProxy unique? Why is her lived experience of the world so valuable?
There’s a tier system, because I think we do a lot of these things today. We’ve got GrubHub and Seamless, and we’ve got Handy, right? We’ve got Care.com. We have all these apps and programs to parcel out parts of our lives so that we can be productive and do the things we need to do to put food on the table. So most of [the Proxy concepts] were things that are already here, just amplified by the technology that’s available. And being an EmoProxy…. It’s funny, because when I pitch the book to people and I say the main character gets paid to have emotional experiences for people because they have no time for themselves, everybody’s like, “Oh my gosh, I want one of those.” And that was the one that hasn’t happened yet, because it’s truly impossible. But I wanted some [Proxys] that if the technology was there, what’s the next logical step? That feels to me sometimes the only thing keeping us from outsourcing things like that, is the fact that we just don’t have the technological capability to do so yet.
Liv, a mercenary, and Adrian, an enforcer of state law, operate on opposite ends of this society that functions to serve LifeCorp’s bottom line. How do their placements in society inform their relationship?
I love the idea of characters representing different philosophies and having them battle it out on the page, sometimes literally, mostly metaphorically, as a way for me to wrestle with those ideas in my head. There’s a point at which Adrian says that even though his coworkers think he’s this potential traitor because of his background, that he’s actually one of the most loyal people to LifeCorp, because without them, he’d be dead. And I think that a lot of Americans, like immigrants—and I come from a family of immigrants—feel that way. Like we have some sort of allegiance to this country, for saving us from a different path, and making it possible to go a different way. And I think that his reasons for loving LifeCorp are valid. He’s not just some robot enforcing the standard order of things, because that’s just what we do here. He has a genuine reason for doing this. And then [with] Liv, I also wanted her to have a very understandable perspective of everything around her, and all the people in her life tell her that this is the way to get by. And if making money and getting out is the most important thing, she’ll break the law to do it. She’s doing the best she can with the information she’s given and the skills that she has. And both of those seem like very understandable circumstances. I wanted to put them on opposite ends of the chessboard and see what happens when they meet in the middle.
The Dividing Sky by Jill Tew. Joy Revolution, Oct. 8 $19.99; ISBN 978-0-593-71035-7
