One of the stories in this collection features experimental drugs that can enhance someone's verbal ability to describe an event. I feel like I could use a few doses of that stuff to help me review this book because I'm struggling to articulate what I found so good about it. 
 At a basic level, there are ten short stories that reminded me somewhat of Kurt Vonnegut because Saunders uses sci-fi concepts and humor in several of them to depict various aspects of human nature, but this has some nastier edges than you'd usually find in Vonnegut's more melancholy tone. 
 I enjoyed almost all of them, but there are three stand outs. Escape From Spiderhead features a genuinely disturbing account of a prisoner being used an experimental subject for various drugs that can be used to make someone fall instantly into love or hit a suicidal depth of despair within moments. Victory Lap is about a young man whose behavior has been so dictated by his parents that he finds himself almost paralyzed as he witnesses a neighbor girl being abducted. Exhortation is written as a message from a corporate middle manager urging his people to do a better job that takes a sinister turn. 
 There are similar characters and ideas brought up in a several of the stories like a dystopian future with a corporate layer of bullshit laid on top of it. Both Spiderhead and My Chivalric Fiasco have drugs that can modify behavior to extreme lengths. Prominent characters are poor and stupid like Al Roosten and the narrator of The Semplica Girl Diaries. 
 The only one I didn't care for was the very short Sticks about a man whose yard decorations get increasingly bizarre. That one seemed more gimmick than story.