Max Barry’s Jennifer Government is a dystopian fantasy set in a not too distant future when corporations have come to totally dominate the life of the planet. People take on their employer’s name as their last name. (Children attend schools sponsored by corporations and take on the name of their school.) The Police are just another corporation out to make a buck. You can hire them to protect you or to commit mayhem or murder on your behalf but don’t expect them to show up for free. Taxes have been declared illegal and while there is a Government, it is not charged with upholding law, but solicits funding from the survivors of crime victims to fund investigations.
So it is that John Nike, marketing executive and his assistant, John Nike contract with Hack Nike to murder the first 10 customers to purchase their new $2500/pair sneakers in order to establish street cred. Frightened, Hack subcontracts the job to The Police who pass it along to the NRA. And Jennifer Government, the determined agent who used to be Corporate and has a strange bar code tattoo under her left eye succeeds in raising $200,000 dollars from the parents of Haley McDonalds, one of the teens killed at Nike Town, and sets out to get John Nike. A war ensues between the competing customer loyalty programs United Alliance and Shoppers Advantage and mayhem results.
While in some ways it reminded me of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the tone is much lighter and it is at times laugh out loud funny suggesting possibly that if Big Business rather than the Religious Right succeeds in grabbing the wheel and driving off the cliff the results may be more amusing if no less tragic. Happy Fourth!
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