"Career Opportunities" by Parker (Parker 11). Guest review by Piper.

If you've read one Parker story, you've read 'em all. They're all about the same thing - controlling and degrading women. Right?

To put it bluntly, yes they are, but no they're not. While the first line is basically true in general, in detail it's like saying all Arthur C. Clarke ever wrote was science and science fiction, or all Stephen King ever wrote were thrillers. If you actually start looking at the stories, you'll find that details make all the difference in the world.

In this story, the central character is a woman named Barbara Dahlton. She's a corporate bigwig, one of the senior staff, and likes to throw her weight around and step on those little people beneath her feet. They're expendable. If they start making too much noise about being treated badly, make them quit. If a young, smart, beautiful woman starts with the company, do everything you can to get rid of the competition. So what if you destroy any future she might have had working anyplace else at the same time. She shouldn't have dared to be so beautiful, smart, and vulnerable at the same time. Barbara is what people commonly call an executive bitch from hell.

Think about her name. Think about one of the less flattering diminutives of her first name. Then remove one syllable from her last name. Wonder who's going to receive an unwanted makeover?

As I said, the differences are in the details, and Parker excels in making all the details work in a tight, interesting story. The sex is sometimes hot, and sometimes disgusting. At times, I wouldn't wish what happens to her on my worst enemy. If this was real life, everyone involved should either end up in jail for a long period of time, or spend a long vacation in a padded room. Luckily, it's fantasy, and the reader can pick and choose which of the protagonists to envision themselves being. Or, possibly, the reader could choose to be all of them at different times.

The main characters are very real, even if they do step beyond the bounds of what's normal. The situations are real enough that they only require a modicum of suspension of disbelief. The 'big bosses' are sufficiently blind, stupid, arrogant, short-sighted, and misogynistic at the proper times that they don't poke their noses into their subordinates' fun. That's exactly what the 'little people' have, too. Fun. At the expense, fortunately (unfortunately for her), of a woman they think deserves everything they can throw at her. And in this story, like many of Parker's others, 'everything' means a long, long fall down the business and evolutionary ladders.

Problems and errors are hard to find. A few poorly chosen words. Some sloppy punctuation. One or two misspellings. In a story this long, those are forgivable. The only problem I had with the story itself was with Barbara. It was slightly harder to suspend enough disbelief to imagine that a woman of her obvious intelligence and mental toughness could be steamrollered without putting up a bit more of a struggle. But, that's a minor quibble, and I only include it because a reviewer is supposed to find something that a writer can use to improve a story.

Parker wrote some of the classics of this genre, and this is one of his best stories. Enjoy, if you've got a twisted enough mind.