Tenth of December

In several stories, elements of corporate-controlled speech enter the narrative, such as the trademarked terms for drugs in “Escape from Spiderhead” or the name Semplica Girls (which, in the world of the story, is already and commonly shortened to SGs, such that the reader doesn’t encounter the full term until its meaning is being explored for a child). The products are often heightened parodies of contemporary products; VerbaluceTM and DarkenfloxxTM echo prescription drug naming conventions, and MiiVOXMax is a tech-inspired mashup of big-brand naming conventions. These function as markers of the way that corporate power has shaped reality in modern life for these characters, using branding to increase its stranglehold on society. For Saunders, putting a proper name on the dehumanizing forces that shape his characters is an act of criticism toward tech and pharmaceutical practice and a deliberately blunt satire of American corporate lingo. The Semplica Girls make an even more pointed statement about the conflation between status symbols and the trauma that they inflict on women from impoverished countries, literalizing the harm of capitalist consumption.

On the flipside of the overt visibility that corporations build through advertising and branding are the subtle implications within corporate power structures best exemplified in “Exhortation.