Corporate Gunslinger by Doug Engstrom
Monday, June 15, 2020 at 7:08AM 
Published by Harper Voyager on June 16, 2020
Notwithstanding its unfortunate title, Corporate Gunslinger offers a smart, offbeat, and entertaining allegory of the ways in which corporations enslave workers and screw over consumers. The story mixes corporate greed with the gun culture, imagining an environment in which contract disputes can be settled in duels.
The story imagines that corporations in the near future will take the sanctity of their contracts seriously, largely because contracts always favor the corporation. “Life service contracts” bind a debtor to the service of a corporation for life. Life service contracts are a condition of loans. Default on the loan and the lender takes everything the debtor owns and then indentures the debtor. The corporation controls the debtor’s life, dictates where the debtor will live and work, what the debtor will eat, and whether the debtor will have children. A life service contract ends when the debt is repaid, but since the corporation charges fees for the housing and meals it provides, as well as interest and various service fees, repaying the debt is usually impossible. Bankruptcy does not exist and neither, apparently, does the Thirteenth Amendment.
Kira Clark lost her parents to disease while she was in college. Medical debt wiped out her inheritance. She took out student loans to pursue a career as an actress, believing that her talent would allow her to repay the debt. It didn’t work out. If she defaults on her payments, she’s facing a life of servitude. Her one hope is to take a job fighting duels as a corporate gunslinger.
Gunfighters work for insurance companies. The companies force contract disputes into arbitration, which consumers always lose. When insurance companies refuse to pay out and consumers lose their arbitration, they have the option to challenge the company to a duel. The company hires professional gunfighters to represent their interests while dueling consumers do the best they can.
Kira’s intense training and determination make her a good gunfighter. She wins match after match for the insurance company that employs her, but she still isn’t making enough to retire her debt. If she quits, she will default on her payments and face the demands of a life service contract. If she keeps fighting matches, she’s likely to lose her life to a lucky shot. Kira finally decides to risk it all by fighting a high stakes professional match that pits one corporate gunfighter against another. The bloodthirsty public loves duels — they love Kira and have dubbed her “Death’s Angel” — but they really love watching professionals duel. The best outcomes occur when both fighters are wounded. The first to fall (or bleed to death) loses.
The novel is billed as a satire but, like Gulliver’s Travels, the story is told in a straightforward manner that asks the reader to accept the impossible as true. Doug Engstrom doesn’t openly condemn America’s gun culture or its corporate culture, but the story’s suggestion that a fair number of gun-loving Americans would allow their enjoyment of dueling to offset their opposition to corporate slavery rings true.
Kira is a likable character, but Engstrom doesn’t let the reader — or Kira — forget that she kills people for a living. Is the remorse she feels an adequate reason to forgive the choices she has made? Engstrom doesn’t dictate an answer. In fact, the ambiguous ending makes it possible for the reader to write the final chapter. The opportunity to write it in a way that the reader finds morally or empathically correct is one of the joys of this provocative novel.
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