Customer Reviews

Gladiator-at-Law (Ballantine #02764)

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Unfortunately for sci-fi fans, Cyril M. Kornbluth had a very short life (1923-1958). Nevertheless he was able to deliver several very good novels alone or usually in collaboration with other authors as The Syndic (1953), "Gunner Cade" (with Judith Merril 1952) and The Space Merchants (with Pohl 1952).

"Gladiator-at-law" (1954) in collaboration with his friend Frederik Pohl (1919) is one of his best.
First of all what an enticing title! You simply can't let it pass by unnoticed!
The story describes a dystopia with many traits in common with their previous successful novel "The Space Merchants". I think these similarities conspired against "Gladiator-at-law" relegating it to a more obscure place than it deserves.

The plot is as follows: this future world is ruled by Corporations that control economic and political power.
Population is roughly divided in three segments.
Top level is the Titans (industrial and/or financial).
Middle class (professionals, administrators, technicians) bonded to the Corporations by a contract. They live in permanent danger to loose their job AND housing. Being the housing the key issue of this nearly servitude status.
Finally at the bottom of the pyramid a huge mass of dispossessed are nourished and entertained by the state and lives into pauper neighborhoods without law.
A lawyer that is barely able to keep into the second class is contacted by a mysterious couple of siblings.
From there on action rage without respite allowing the reader to get in touch with a nightmarish world.

This book is a wonderful example of a turning point in sci-fi literature from traditional technological spaces operas to a more humanistic and sociological subjects.
Enjoy this somehow underrated sci-fi classic!

Reviewed by Max Yofre

It is astonishing to me, and more than a little frightening in a paranoid kind of way, that this novel is out of print. It is first, an excellent read. Second, I have never read a book that more accurately and scathingly satirized the state of today's world. From a housing development fourty years later called "Belly Rave," (Belle Reve) to an spot-on prediction of reality television, this novel accurately predicted our modern world on many levels, and in particular, the danger of the trans-national corporate state that the current occupant and his cronies seems to be woking so hard to create.
If you haven't read this book, do so, and even better, be subversive, and give a copy to an intelligent friend.