Frederik Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth The Space Merchants (1952)
It has been impressed upon me for the last couple of years, or at least since I read New Maps of Hell, that this was the Kornbluth collaboration I really needed to read. I therefore kept looking, despite A Mile Beyond the Moon and others; and at last, here we are.
I thought it would be funnier, and I'm not sure it entirely lives up to expectations - although my expectations were fairly nebulous - but otherwise, yes - I can see that the hype is at least partially justified. Written in the fifties, The Space Merchants predicts a future which has turned out unfortunately like the present and, oddly, foreshadows Philip K. Dick's projections of where capitalism was headed - could be either the influence of this book or great minds thinking alike. Where Dick would incorporate the occasional scene of advertising drones attaching themselves to the hood of one's flying car and attempting to sell you toothpaste while you're trying to concentrate on driving, here the emphasis is much heavier, darker, arguably more sarcastic - maybe like a more overtly dystopian take on Mad Men.
The writing is lively and literate without ever quite crossing over into the jabbering of which Kornbluth was occasionally guilty, and it has the feel of one of those science-fiction novels you can usually smuggle in under the radar of those who might ordinarily wrinkle noses unless it's Wells or Wyndham. Our tale relates the story of an advertising executive who falls from grace and ends up fighting for survival at the bottom end of the economic totem pole, a victim of those forces he once helped perpetuate. Inevitably, his fall from grace brings an awakening, although I have to admit I found the last quarter - from chapter fourteen onwards - a little bewildering and hence unsatisfying in comparison with that which went before, although not enough so as to diminish the whole.
As an aside, the suffering underclass here depicted as justifiably disgruntled bordering on heroic suggests that Kornbluth's supposed sympathy for eugenics - as implied by The Marching Morons and The Little Black Bag - is far from being so cut and dried an argument as his critics have alleged. For my taste The Space Merchants could have used a bit more atmosphere, but it's otherwise decent.
It has been impressed upon me for the last couple of years, or at least since I read New Maps of Hell, that this was the Kornbluth collaboration I really needed to read. I therefore kept looking, despite A Mile Beyond the Moon and others; and at last, here we are.
I thought it would be funnier, and I'm not sure it entirely lives up to expectations - although my expectations were fairly nebulous - but otherwise, yes - I can see that the hype is at least partially justified. Written in the fifties, The Space Merchants predicts a future which has turned out unfortunately like the present and, oddly, foreshadows Philip K. Dick's projections of where capitalism was headed - could be either the influence of this book or great minds thinking alike. Where Dick would incorporate the occasional scene of advertising drones attaching themselves to the hood of one's flying car and attempting to sell you toothpaste while you're trying to concentrate on driving, here the emphasis is much heavier, darker, arguably more sarcastic - maybe like a more overtly dystopian take on Mad Men.
The writing is lively and literate without ever quite crossing over into the jabbering of which Kornbluth was occasionally guilty, and it has the feel of one of those science-fiction novels you can usually smuggle in under the radar of those who might ordinarily wrinkle noses unless it's Wells or Wyndham. Our tale relates the story of an advertising executive who falls from grace and ends up fighting for survival at the bottom end of the economic totem pole, a victim of those forces he once helped perpetuate. Inevitably, his fall from grace brings an awakening, although I have to admit I found the last quarter - from chapter fourteen onwards - a little bewildering and hence unsatisfying in comparison with that which went before, although not enough so as to diminish the whole.
As an aside, the suffering underclass here depicted as justifiably disgruntled bordering on heroic suggests that Kornbluth's supposed sympathy for eugenics - as implied by The Marching Morons and The Little Black Bag - is far from being so cut and dried an argument as his critics have alleged. For my taste The Space Merchants could have used a bit more atmosphere, but it's otherwise decent.
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