I have been eagerly looking forward to reading the latest short story collection by George Saunders, but I had to be patient, as it is a much-sought-after item at our local library. Now that I have read it, I can’t help but compare it with another Saunders collection, Tenth of December. Both collections are fairly slim at just over two hundred pages, and both have a mix of mainstream and speculative fiction stories. As with Tenth of December, I liked some stories in Liberation Day more than others. Of course just about every reader of short story collections is going to have favorites. And in both collections, the science fiction tales are the strongest stories in the books.

A recurrent theme in the science fiction of George Saunders is the exploitation of the lower class as helpless pawns, puppets, and performers of the rich and influential. In Tenth of December, this is brought out in the story “The Semplica Girl Diaries,” in which live third world women are hung as decorative mannequins outside of the homes of the affluent. In Liberation Day, there are no less than three stories with similar themes. “Liberation Day,” the longest story in the book, tells of members of poor families being pinioned to the walls of special rooms in the homes of the rich, and after their memories are erased they serve as instruments of entertainment; their owners manipulate their limbs and their voices from special consoles. “Ghoul” is a weird, brutal dystopian story of the inhabitants of a closed underground system of tunnels and caverns who must endlessly rehearse their parts in a series of theme parks for visitors who never arrive. “Elliott Spencer” also tells of memory-erased individuals who are coerced into servitude.

Other stories such as “The Mom of Bold Action,” “A Thing at Work,” and “Sparrow” deal with more mundane situations, but Saunders uses multiple viewpoints, diverse styles, and events that sometimes resemble scenes out of sit-coms to bring them to life.

One of the things I appreciate most about this collection is the author’s willingness to experiment with styles and viewpoints. It brings to life one of my favorite pieces of writing advice ever, from Saunders’ book A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life. After meticulously analyzing and drawing lessons from the short stories of some of the greatest of Russian writers, this is Saunders’ closing piece of advice: “The closest thing to a method I have to offer is this: go forth and do what you please.” In his short story collections, it is clear that Saunders follows his own counsel. He has fun with his words, his plots, his characters, and his themes. Sometimes some of the stories start a bit slow, but as he goes along, Saunders adds layer after layer of nuance until by the end he has taken readers in completely unexpected directions. And that’s what short story writing is all about.