Forever on the Clock

Work-life separation, whether you like it or not.

- By Roxana Hadadi

IN 1953, in an early indication of the anti-capitalist, anti-authority themes that would define his work for decades to come, Philip K. Dick published the short story “Paycheck.” In it, a man named Jennings wakes up with no memory of the past two years and no idea of the work he did in that time for Rethrick Construction. He agreed to have “his mind washed clean” after finishing the job, he acknowledges, but his current self doesn’t know why his previous self made that choice. Was it out of fear? Eventually, with no ability to communicate with the Jennings who was, the Jennings who is must acquiesce: “Maybe it wasn’t so bad, after all. Almost like being paid to sleep … It was like selling part of himself, part of his life. And life was worth plenty, these days.”

Dick’s nearly 70-year-old warning against corporate secrecy and the individual erasure that comes with it is given thrilling, disturbing new life in Severance on Apple TV+. Although creator and showrunner Dan Erickson hasn’t publicly cited “Paycheck” as an inspiration, Severance sits under the sci-fi icon’s long shadow. This confident, stylishly directed first season is a pressure cooker of obfuscation and surveillance set in a time and place left purposely vague. Big bad corporation Lumon Industries could be anywhere because the conditions that make its abuse of workers and its corresponding financial success possible are everywhere. How could the promise of work-life balance be used against you? What would powerlessness drive you to do, and what would power?