Still, the speculative elements certainly earn their keep. It’s science fiction porn for the men, a moralistic bone thrown to the women. Or, put it this way: Boy gets girl, boy saves girl in hyper-drugged, hyper-sexed, near-future setting. One might question the gender study in “Spiderhead.” Simply put, it’s male criminal tries to save female criminals, with all of whom he’s had sex and fallen in and out of love in mere hours. Here the science fiction element is more than outlier or overlay it’s woven into the nooks and crannies of the inmates’ sexual and emotional interactions. Futuristic sex-enhancement drugs form character impetus and provide ongoing momentum for the plot. “Spiderhead” is the more solidly built of the two stories, as its speculative elements prove necessary. In “ Escape from Spiderhead” and “ The Semplica Girl Diaries,” the narratives push past world-building and into a socio-economic focus on the exploitation of women, minorities, immigrants and the incarcerated. Understandably.His storytelling tends toward characterization rather than the world-building ad nauseam stereotype of contemporary science fiction. Science fiction readers put Saunders’ work on a pedestal. Despite the Times’ suggestion, however, the stories are not equally matched. It is easy to fall in love with Saunders, both his work and his personae, as portrayed in the article. The collection recently enjoyed a New York Times love fest discussing Saunders’ views of Syracuse, D. With laughter, frequent shudders and always an accessible rigor that fellow writers have come to love and expect in Saunders’ work, this collection - mostly realism - does not disappoint. In Tenth of December, humor and satire infuse dysfunctional families, dysfunctional sex, unsuspected heroism, realism and near future settings in 10 short stories from short-short length to full length. And here he goes again with more breadth than most writers would attempt in one collection. Saunders gnawing on the gizzard, laughing and spitting chunks of flesh at everyone. Tossing out chunks of meat, a liver, a kidney. Imagine a Civil War general with bayonet, slicing the family turkey on Thanksgiving.

George Saunders is an undisputed genius in cutting eloquent slices of dark, odd, familiar and too familiar.

Tenth of december stories