The Space Merchants by Cyril Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl 10 out of 10

 The Space Merchants by Cyril Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl

10 out of 10

The Space Merchants is a mesmerizing, captivating Science Fiction masterpiece, which has a surprising love story at its center, as well as political themes, a crime story that develops and keeps readers at the edge of the seat at times, with Mitch Courtenay as the hero, though to begin with he is the representative of the ‘upper class’, as a star class copywriter, one of the crème de la crème that knows about ‘consumers’ only from studies and tests, but not as one of the crowd, in a future that is separated between the consumers and the rest, the former being the poorer equivalents of the middle class of the present, albeit reduced to a state of poverty when compared with the rich of the future – some would become revolutionaries – some of us would hate to think that they might be projections of leftists or worse, commies.

Corporations control the future, which might not surprise anyone, although the extent to which they have politicians in the pocket and the ‘consumers ‘is terrifying, for the addictive substances are present in Cofffeest and we can assume all other popular products that push people into a cycle of dependence – they have to have three cups with every meal, then they have the urge to light cigarettes (here and in the area of communications the glorious authors of the splendid Magnum opus might have made the wrong predictions, although we may all start to light up, especially now that the pandemic has struck and looks like coming back with a vengeance and smokers are better in the fight with it and who knows what will happen to mobile phones and everything else on a distant, crowded planet).

Those with talent are well paid to work for advertising – poetry has been left for the untalented – and this domain has expanded, for they no longer sell things that others produce – the state of Bhutan has been the last to introduce television and ads, perhaps around 1990 and the effects have been measured and they are negative, ads create a craving for unnecessary goods and consumerism, as we all know or should know- and ad agencies create new industries and they have immense power…at the start, the head of the ad agency Fowler Schocken, highlights the benefits that his workers have, two rooms in apartments, in a world that does not have enough space and is thus in the process of trying to colonize and terraform Venus, an endeavor that would be promoted by the agency and Mitch is supposed to be the head of the new venture.

The hero, that acts in parts like an antihero, is married to Kathy, a beautiful doctor, but their relationship is worse than unstable, it seems to be disintegrating – albeit we would learn later that the reasons might not be emotional, physical, but rather political, for in a replica of what happens today, when if you embrace say the democrats and their candidate, there is little you can share with the republicans and their monstrous cult leader, Kathy has seen that her husband does not show virtues that we would praise today, kindness, empathy, generosity, munificence, unselfishness, and on the contrary, he appears to think of himself, without concern for ‘consumers’, unworried by the poison that companies use without mercy, trying to get alkaloids to have millions or billions hooked to their products, with no escape – there is a cure for Coffeest, but it costs 5,000 dollars and thus it is easiest to cope with the cost of the daily doses…

When he is given control of the Venus project, Mitch has to start working with the first person to have reached that planet – though the ads speak of the ‘stars’ and the hero sees where the mistake must have originated –Jack O’Shea, a midget, the test pilot who had been selected for this mission because he consumes only one third of the air, food of a normal person and thus engineers were able to design a rocket that could reach the planet, an impossible task otherwise, given that humans consume a lot of food and air, and this combined with the fuel needed for the rocket, would have rendered the size of the space ship more than gargantuan…anyway, this is what is expected now that humans would be encouraged to embark on a mission to colonize a planet that is more than inhospitable, with fantastic winds, no waiter, orangey lights and atmosphere, but desirable nonetheless when posed against the perils that earth is and will be facing in this narrative about a possible future…

The star class is worried about the fact that the small sized pilot, now that he is the first human to have reached Venus has become the most popular man on earth and women are rushing to be with him and his wife is also interested in the celebrity, furthermore, she has announced that once the next few months are over, she would not seek to make their marriage…permanent – in this reality, marriages could be of different kinds and theirs is just interlocutory, but now that Mitch is in charge of the Venus project and has Jack more or less helping his team, there is a chance that the relationship might be revitalized, if it is not the pilot that the doctor is interested in – anticipating, she is not.

The project manager has some trouble along the way, has to fire a whole office and when he is on the footsteps of the man he thinks has done wrong, in Antarctica of all places, he is attacked and then he wakes up on the way to…Costa Rica, just as his death has been announced, and he finds he is no longer a star class copywriter and a member of the elite, but he has to work at the bottom, as a regular ‘consumer’, experiencing the traumas, privations and humility endured by the destitute, in the future and forever, trying to infiltrate the ‘consies’ – which sounds like commies, but may have more in common with present day greens – in order to get back to New York and Kathy, his plum job at the top of the world – he tries to call, but international communication costs a fortune, seemingly the authors have not anticipated the internet, Skype, zoom and all the rest, or, on the contrary, they have been visionaries here and everywhere in the magic book and they foresaw a time when all this is gone and replaced with a calamitous scenario…

There are hilarious passages and emotional, scary predictions, such as the idea that they would project ads directly on the retina, when travelling in the sky, the windows just block the view to show ads, some of them so stupid we have to laugh – ‘perspire, perspire, but not make him lose his desire’- the idea that meat would be in short supply is anticipated – here some would argue that it is not, but the trend is present and besides, we know that cattle and domestic animals generate a lot of methane gas, much of agriculture is used to feed animals and thus the trend is inevitable, fewer animals would have to be raised in the future, to save the planet, on which there is no more land to use for their food, in order to kill them for human consumption, which is anyway cruel and hopefully forbidden in the future.

Mitch returns to New York and tries hard to gain access to his old company, though he has a different name now, he is ‘low class’ and has a tattoo with a very low security number, which is proof of his descent into the depth of the unprivileged, consumers community, which is obviously the huge majority, but the most interesting transformation, epiphany we should call it, would take place in his soul, where he may stop looking at ‘consies’ with disgust and class hatred and understand, see where the truth is…