The Space Merchants / Frederick Pohl & C.M.Kornbluth

The Space Merchants

category: science fiction, author:

Frederick Pohl & C.M.Kornbluth

original copyright 1952,
read in November 2010 (and before, in July 2007)

Agamedes' opinion: 6 out of 10

Six out of ten? "Six", meaning, "read to pass the time"? Thirty years ago I may have given it a seven but now, it seems a bit too over-the-top to be "well worth reading". Still, the message is still good.

That's the problem with "Masterworks" -- they may have been great in their time but sometimes that time has passed. Or, perhaps, my time has passed for reading this book.

The book presents a simple message: The world is going to hell in a hand basket because money is seen as more important than environment and quality of life. The message is simple and it is still valid. Perhaps that's a part of the problem.

We have a Mamas and the Papas CD. The Ms&Ps sing about dancing in the streets. According to the song, this open air festivity will cure the world of all evil... And yet the world -- so many years on that most if not all of the Ms&Ps are now dead -- the world is still full of evil.

It's the same with The Space Merchants: the simplistic answer was not implemented, it may not have worked anyway, the world is still driven by consumerism ahead of conservation.

The consumerism versus conservation war still rages but the field of battle has changed. Reading The Space Merchants reminds us that we have not yet reached hell but the war continues.

The book itself is heavy going at the start. Again, perhaps because it takes a stretch of the imagination to get past the failure of the predictions made. The reader has to read about the world as described and apply the plot to the world as it has actually developed. I also had trouble believing the extreme view of the then-future consumerist society.

Once the imagination has been stretched and belief correctly suspended, this is a good book.

Perhaps The Space Merchants is worth seven out of ten? When it was written -- and for many more years -- it was "eight", "really quite good". I believe that this book suffers due to comparison with the actual track of the predicted future.

Perhaps you should read it and form your own opinion.

..o0o..

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