The Work in Common

By Vienna Leary

A society can have all the right systems and still fail the people who depend upon them.

In a future Australia, the work of building a fairer society has moved beyond political promises and into the practical arrangements of daily life.

Knowledge is shared. Public services are organised around human need. Work, education and community responsibility are being reconsidered, along with the institutions that once determined who could participate and on what terms.

But a better system is not necessarily a perfect one.

When a problem occurs, who has the authority to act? When the official record says everything is working, who listens to the person standing beside the broken machine? And what happens when the procedures designed to protect people begin preventing them from doing what needs to be done?

Through the lives of ordinary workers, families and communities, The Work in Common explores the gap between good intentions and practical consequences.

This is not a story of a perfect future, nor a warning that every attempt at social improvement must fail. It is a novel about what people can achieve when they share knowledge, responsibility and the freedom to question the systems they have created.

Thoughtful, humane and grounded in everyday experience, The Work in Common asks what it would take to build a society in which participation means more than simply following instructions.

A standalone work of speculative Australian literary and political fiction by Vienna Leary.

Digital edition: one EPUB file. No physical book will be posted.