The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth
155 pages
Published 1953; originally published serially as Gravy Planet in 1952
Read from October 11 to October 12
Rating: ★★★ out of 5
General spoilers ahead.
This began with such promise. A brilliantly dark satire of a future America where megacorporations run the government and advertizing is the highest form of human expression, The Space Merchants is best in the first half or so, when its merchant is a steely-eyed true believer, oblivious to the horrors he narrates. Even after "the Haroun al Raschid bit" (in the words of Phil Klass, a sci-fi writer friend of Pohl's who read an early draft), when our star-class hero gets violently demoted to indentured servitude and must explore the lowest echelons of society, there are enough nauseating details (Chicken Little!) and too-close-to-home commentary on recent (and, plausibly, future) abuses of labor to make up for the sudden scattershot focus. It's in the final wind-up and climax that The Space Merchants let me down, rushing to accomplish a whole bunch of things in order for the good guys to win and escape to the fresh commercial prospects of Venus. The final third or so feels more like a standard 1950s sci-fi novel, with guns and quick thinking saving the day and the guy getting the girl (plus or minus a suicide along the way). Those first two-thirds, however, deserve classic science fiction status.
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