Jennifer Government

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So I saw this book in the bookstore not long ago, called Jennifer Government. The title sounded familiar, like something I'd seen online, and the cover looked intriguing, so I glanced over it. Here's the blurb from the author's website:

Welcome to paradise! The world is run by American corporations (except for a few deluded holdouts like the French); taxes are illegal; employees take the last names of the companies they work for; the Police and the NRA are publicly-traded security firms; and the U.S. government only investigates crimes it can bill for.

Hack Nike is a Merchandising Officer who discovers an all-new way to sell sneakers. Buy Mitsui is a stockbroker with a death-wish. Billy NRA is finding out that life in a private army isn't all snappy uniforms and code names. And Jennifer Government, a legendary agent with a barcode tattoo, is the consumer watchdog from hell.

An intriguing setup. Sadly, my books-to-read stack is approximately as tall as one of the stacks of garbage in "Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout," and only got bigger at WisCon, so I figured I'd hold off on reading the book. But since then I've mentioned the book and the last-names-of-companies premise to a bunch of people, and none of them had heard of the book. So now I'm thinking perhaps word should be spread in sf circles (though it was a New York Times Notable Book in 2003, so perhaps it doesn't really need more exposure).

Anyway, I Googled the name "Jennifer" this morning while looking for the name of the PE_ZAFI.B virus, and learned that the most popular Jennifers on the web are, in order:

  1. Jennifer Lopez
  2. Jennifer Aniston
  3. Jennifer's language page (featuring common phrases in a huge variety of languages)
  4. Jennifer Government: NationStates
  5. Jennifer Garner (which reminds me that some day I'm going to write up a long entry about Alias)

Wait, what's this NationStates thing? you're probably asking. Here's what the welcome page says:

Jennifer Government: NationStates is a nation simulation game. You create your own country, fashioned after your own political ideals, and care for its people. Either that or you deliberately torture them. It's really up to you.

I mentioned it in a journal entry about six months ago, but what I hadn't realized is that it's based on, or at least derived from, the novel. And that's why the novel title sounded familiar when I saw it in the bookstore.

And the game was designed by Max Barry, the author of the novel. And the real reason I'm posting this entry at all is that his blog is entertaining. Among other things, recent entries describe attending his first sf convention and reading his first Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen book (not at the same time), the latter of which featured more computer geeks than he'd expected.

2 Responses to “Jennifer Government”

  1. Karen

    I played NationStates couple years back when he first set the thing up online, but now I can’t remember my country’s name to log in. It was fun but not really as a long-term thing; mostly it worked to make me aware of Jennifer Government. As Barry describes the project:

    “…it seemed like a fun idea, and a way to let people know about my novel Jennifer Government. With luck, some of the people who play NationStates will buy the book. Then my publisher will think I am a left-field marketing genius, instead of a chump who blew four months on a web game when he should have been working on his next novel.”

    Which makes me feel fondly towards him.

  2. Merrie Haskell

    It’s a brilliant marketing move. I started playing the game at a friends rec. I looked at the first chapter of the book on-line, wasn’t sold enough to order it, played some more of the game…

    Then, a month later, I was in the airport, my husband had failed to bring a book with him and was desperate for something to read, I saw _Jennifer Government_ on the shelf and bought it while only briefly looking at the rest of the titles.

    And that’s when I realized the power of name recognition works for more than just Stephen King.

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