Max Barry
Overview
 
Max Barry is a contemporary Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n author. He also maintains a blog on various topics, including writing, marketing and politics. When he published his first novel, Syrup
Syrup (novel)
Syrup is a satirical comedy of marketing and consumerism written by Max Barry, under the name Maxx Barry. Published in 1999, it is Barry's debut novel...

, he spelled his name "Maxx", but subsequently has used "Max".

Barry is also the creator of NationStates
Jennifer Government: NationStates
Jennifer Government: NationStates is a multiplayer nation simulation browser game. It was created by Max Barry and was publicly released on 13 November 2002, based loosely on his novel Jennifer Government. The game has hosted over 3 million nations...

, a game created to help advertise Jennifer Government
Jennifer Government
Jennifer Government is a novel written by Max Barry. Published in 2003, it is Barry's second novel, following 1999's Syrup. The novel is set in a dystopian alternate reality in which most nations are dominated by for-profit corporate entities while the government's political power is extremely...

, and is the owner of the website 'Tales of Corporate Oppression'. He lives in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

 with his wife and daughters and worked as a marketer for Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...

 before he became a novelist.

In early 2004 Barry converted his web site to a weblog and began regularly posting to it.
Quotations

When it's done with being graceful and poetic, language is meant to communicate, after all.

Great Writing interview

I feel comfortably qualified to talk about anything, but that's a personal problem and I'm dealing with it.

Great Writing interview

Corporations! It's like there are these gigantic monsters living among us, and we don't mind that they're monsters because when we look at them they smile and hand us cheeseburgers. That's nuts.

Great Writing interview

"John here," the other John said, "pioneered the concept of marketing by refusing to sell any products. It drives the market insane."

Chapter 1, page 4

"I remember when you could always rely on those little street kids to pop a few people for the latest Nikes," Vice-President John said. "Now people get mugged for Reeboks, for Adidas — for generics, for Christ's sake."

Chapter 1, page 5

The easier your job, the more you got paid. John had suspected this for many years, but here was the proof: pulling down five hundred bucks an hour to sit in the afternoon sun on top of an L.A. office tower.

Chapter 40, page 138

 
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