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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cynicism at its thought provoking best!,
By Paul Weiss (Dundas, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Space Merchants (Sf Masterworks) (Paperback)
Brilliantly written in the 1950s, "The Space Merchants" is a deeply cynical and darkly prescient dystopian novel in which advertising, conspicuous consumption and capitalism have run rampant in a world beset with overpopulation and environmental degradation.Mitch Courtenay is an executive copywriter with Fowler Schocken, an advertising agency that has been given the task of selling the notion of colonizing Venus, an environmental hell-hole, to an over-populated and environmentally stressed earth. Courtenay, born with a proverbial silver spoon in his mouth and unaccustomed to anything but a pampered lifestyle is attacked by a deadly corporate conspiracy, robbed of his identity and imprisoned in an impoverished third world environment, the very existence of which came as a complete shock to him. At the end of the day, whether you believe Courtenay to be an incorrigible villain or a reformed conservationist, "The Space Merchants" is a soft sci-fi classic well ahead of its time that explores thought-provoking themes and disturbing political issues that will be with us for many years to come. A gripping novel that well deserves it place in classic sci-fi libraries. Paul Weiss
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
At last, its back in print.,
By
This review is from: The Space Merchants (Paperback)
Written over 50 years ago, this book anticipated much of what is wrong in the world we now live in -including corporate imperialism, environmental degradation and the villification of conservationists, the replacement of humanity with two categories of people -those who sell and those who consume, the death of spiritual values and the total ascendancy of materialism. Pohl and Kornbluth have created a materialist, consumerist dystopia that ranks with Vonnegut's Player Piano (also written in the early 1950s), and anticipates books like Harry Harrison's Bill the Galactic Hero and Joseph Heller's Catch 22. And, like the latter books, it manages somehow to be funny much of the time. What a tremendous loss it was for science fiction, and literature in general, when Cyril Kornbluth died prematurely. He had the makings of another Swift, if only he could have lived another 20 years.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Subversive Juvenilia,
By
This review is from: Space Merchants (Sf Masterworks) (Paperback)
"The Space Merchants" is one of those science fiction novels that succeeds as social criticism and political satire even though its literary merits are slim. On the negative side, the book has flat characters, ridiculous plot twists, and not one cool scientific idea. Even worse, the story races from scene to scene, never fully imagining the world it tries to create. But in the context of the era in which it was written -- the insane McCarthyite 1950s -- "The Space Merchants" was surely a subversive bombshell. It depicts a crazy 23rd century world in the grip of Big Business and market fundamentalism: ad agencies brainwash the public, private companies own Senate seats, conservationists are hunted down like Reds, and food is laced with opium (the better to build brand loyalty). "The Space Merchants" had a lot of anger hidden beneath its irreverent humor. It must have prompted smart teenagers to think about the warped social values of capitalist America in the 1950s. Smart teenagers will still enjoy it today.
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