Incompetence Is Inevitable: Five Books That Illustrate the Peter Principle

Laurence J. Peter’s Peter Principle is elegantly simple: “In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”

The corollary is, of course: “In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties.”

This is because people who are good at their jobs tend to be promoted. Given sufficient time, they will be promoted from a position in which their skills, aptitudes, and experience were applicable, to one in which they are not. Having reached that level, meritocratic promotion halts.

The effect of this principle may be disheartening¹; it implies that even if one escapes being an example of the Peter Principle, one may well end up working under or supervising an example of the Peter Principle.²

For authors, on the other hand, the Peter Principle can be the germ of many fascinating plots. Characters can prove their mettle by creatively circumventing incompetent bosses or subordinates… or they can serve as cautionary tales. Herewith, five works illustrating the Peter Principle.

Mindswap by Robert Sheckley (1966)

Unable to afford the eye-watering expense of conventional space flight, Marvin settles for the more affordable option of swapping minds with a Martian named Ze Kraggash. Alas, Kraggash is a con-artist who rented the same body to two people. One body can support only one occupant. Marvin would like to go back to his old body, but the scoundrel Kraggash fled into hiding while wearing Marvin’s body.

Desperate to locate Kraggash, Marvin turns to Detective Urf Urdorf. Urdorf is utterly confident that he will catch Kraggash. Why is he so confident? Because Urdorf has failed to solve one hundred fifty-eight cases in a row.

“One hundred and fifty-eight failures! It’s a fantastic record, an unbelievable record, especially if you grant my incorruptibility, good faith, and skill. One hundred fifty-eight! A run like that simply has to break! I could probably sit here in my office and do nothing, and the criminal would find his way to me. That’s how strong the probabilities are in my favor.”

Is Urdorf’s unshakable confidence warranted? Everyone familiar with Sheckley knows the answer is no. Too bad for Marvin but huzzah for the readers.

The Big Black Mark by A. Bertram Chandler (1975)

Chandler wrote dozens of stories and novels about John Grimes, hero of the spaceways. Grimes often irritated his superiors, thanks to his bravado and lack of interest in paperwork and other such minutiae. Nonetheless, Grimes’ one sterling quality—stupendous luck—has ensured his slow rise through the ranks. Nemesis arrives in the form of a promotion for which Grimes is not at all suited: commander of the Discovery, the starship to which the Survey Service consigns its square pegs.

While tolerant of eccentricity, Grimes does prefer that the starships on which he is living be functional enough to sustain life. Efforts to ensure proper maintenance vex Discovery’s crew, who see Grimes as an interstellar Captain Bligh! Contact with a lost colony of voluptuaries proves the final wedge. Unwilling to obey Grimes’ orders, the crew resolves to heed the example of Captain Bligh’s Pacific voyage and rid themselves of their officious captain.

The Grimes stories made it abundantly clear that at some point Grimes would involuntarily exit the Survey Service he loved and embrace a career in the Rim Worlds. Details of his exit (as noted in various tales) were hazy. This novel provided the link between those two phases of Grimes’ life.

The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers (1983)

Magicians Doctor Romany and Amenophis Fikee have a bold plan to make Egypt great again. All that is needed is an arcane magical ceremony far beyond the pair’s abilities. The ceremony is an entirely predictable abject failure. Its calamitous results punch holes in time, all the way up and down the time steam.

It is under these circumstances that bereaved Professor Brendan Doyle is recruited to provide commentary for an 1810 Samuel Taylor Coleridge lecture. In addition to his encyclopedic knowledge of the period’s art world, Doyle also possesses a remarkable talent for attracting danger, whether from his boss (Romany) or other sinister figures inhabiting the English underworld. Good news for Doyle, who may now be forced to focus on something other than grieving for his late wife.

Many of the schemes in this novel fail because there are many people working at cross-purposes, often inadvertently. However, the cabal of traditionalist Egyptian magicians repeatedly proves ill-suited for plots of the magnitude contemplated. It’s almost as though clinging to a regressive, archconservative worldview can have a corrosive effect on the brain.

Growing Light by Marta Randall (1993)

Growing Light was a thriving agricultural software company until visionary George Ashby took command. Under Ashby’s bold leadership, Growing Light now provides the world with unwanted, unworkable products. To ensure employees do not flee his disruptive management style, Ashby has staffed Growing Light with colorful eccentrics, each as ill-suited to their assigned roles as they would be unemployable if they quit.

Enter widow Anne Monroe, whose competence threatens Ashby. Her unpleasant tour as Ashby’s designated enemy is as short-lived as Ashby himself. Alas for Anne, local Sheriff Jackson is as poorly suited to his job as any Growing Light employee is to theirs. Many people wanted Ashby dead, but Anne is Jackson’s prime suspect after the boss is found dead. If Anne wants to avoid arrest and possible conviction, she can’t depend on Jackson to properly investigate.

While technically a mundane mystery, this contra-Hallmark small-town mystery has SFnal elements. Randall (best known as an SF author) must depict a computer company circa the early Nineties; to do so she must explain computers to readers who might not know much about them. Randall’s approach to the infodumping is very SFnal.

[Side note: I was a bit boggled to note the absence of computers in Westlake’s 1984 publishing comedy A Likely Story. I was fairly sure that computers would have been used in offices by then. Even if they weren’t familiar to the masses. Industry insiders assure me I was hopelessly optimistic.]

Severance by Ling Ma (2018)

Specta office drone Candice Chen packages expensive Bibles for the religious book market. Her job is boring. Still, Chen realizes that she’s better off than many other people—particularly the billions doomed to perish of Shen fever. Not only does Chen avoid fungal zombification, she is promoted to keeping the Specta New York office open for the duration of the catastrophe. Which may be as long as it takes for civilization to collapse.

Forced to flee New York, Chen makes the terrible decision to accompany Bob to the secure location Bob swears is waiting for them. Bob’s self-confidence far outweighs his actual skills. To follow Bob is to forge relentlessly towards failure and almost certain doom.

One of Bob’s little quirks is an inability to grasp the difference between fiction and reality. Another is his endearing conviction that other people want to listen to him expound at great length, even on subjects about which they are already well informed. It almost feels as if the author had real-world models in mind…but where could she possibly have met someone like Bob in real life?

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Science fiction and fantasy is rich with plot-enabling characters promoted far beyond the bounds of their competence. Heck, Laumer and Sladek novels could keep me here all day. Perhaps I overlooked your favorite (fictional) examples. If so, comments are below.

In the words of fanfiction author Musty181, four-time Hugo finalist, prolific book reviewer, and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll “looks like a default mii with glasses.” His work has appeared in Interzone, Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis) and the 2021, 2022, and 2023 Aurora Award finalist Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by web person Adrienne L. Travis). His Patreon can be found here.