C. M. Kornbluth (1923–1958)

review of
C. M. Kornbluth's The Explorers
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 26, 2011

I started reading Kornbluth by accident. I'd read some collaborations by G. C. Edmondson & C. M. Kotlan that I'd liked & some work by Edmondson alone that I'd liked less so I decided to look for work by Kotlan alone to see if I'd like that. I was in a bkstore & cdn't remember Kotlan's name so I got bks by Kornbluth instead. Similar names. & what a find Kornbluth seems to be turning out to be!

I'm show more reading the bks by him that I initially got in chronological order. That meant starting w/ The Explorers - 1st published in 1954. This collection of short stories includes his 1st published one, "The Rocket of 1955", presented in Escape magazine in 1939. Kornbluth was 15 or 16 when he wrote it. The 1st story in The Explorers is about a Puerto Rican immigrant working as a dishwasher who's discovered to be a physics genius & subsequently exploited by the U.S. military.

Thru this story Kornbluth immediately struck me as someone w/ a subversive bent who's far from naive about the actions & motives of governments. What particularly interests me is that this wd've been published during the McCarthy Red Scare. It wd appear that SF writers were under McCarthy's radar since McCarthy went after more high-profile people like Hollywood folks who were making big bucks. There's an advantage, sometimes, to barely scraping by financially.

Kornbluth, alas, only made it to age 34 when he died of a heart attack, so I consider the world to be fortunate that he wrote as much as he did starting as early as he did. I'll be reading everything by him that I can get my hands on. show less

My reactions to reading this omnibus in 2004.

The Space Merchants, Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth -- I've never seen a list of classic sf novels that didn't include this title, and there's good reason for that. This story has dated very little. The targets of its satire -- advertising and the conspicuous consumption of capitalism -- are still around and still ripe for attack, so that means the reader can easily overlook the dated elements -- most of which come from technology, and Pohl and show more Kornbluth can't be blamed for not foreseeing certain technological trends. Long distance phone lines are incredibly jammed -- it's almost impossible for an individual to have the "priority number" to place one. The story reveals the usual '50s' sf thinking that rockets would replace airplanes for casual terrestrial travel -- though here the crammed rocketships are, for ordinary "consumers", reminiscent of the horrors of traveling steerage on the old ocean liners. Rockets to the moon are commonplace. Indeed, there's even a settlement there. However, rocket travel to Venus, the central point of contention and attention for this story, is definitely not routinely traveled to. Of course, personal computers are not mentioned, an oversight of many an sf author prior to the late 70s. Surprisingly, though, this story has no mention of computers of any sort that I remember. If you wanted to argue the point, you could say this novel is sociologically and politically dated. After all, far from a world where cafeterias hand out to kids suites of branded products that include Kiddiebutt cigarettes, we have a crusade against tobacco and certain types of food advertising. Billboards are being restricted. (On the other hand, whole new venues have opened up to advertising including the Internet. And, of course, marketers have access to more sophisticated types of consumer research and tracking.) Of course, the most significant dating is around the conception of Venus. Pohl and Kornbluth don't use the old pulp-style Venus of planet-wide jungles or oceans or a world where only one side faces the Sun. Their Venus, and I assume it was based on the science of the time, is a hot, dry place of poisonous atmosphere. Stylistically, it's hard to tell who contributed what. Pohl spent time working in an ad agency so that accounts for the realistic sounding jargon and descriptions of Fowler Shocken's activities (I'm assuming the descriptions are accurate to how an ad agency works, but I don't know.) As far as the themes of a horribly polluted and overpopulated Earth (This isn't the first of the polluted Earth stories, but I suspect it's one of the first overpopulation novels), it's hard to tell who contributed them. Pohl's solo work later develops some of those themes, but he may have picked his concern up from Kornbluth. I seem to recall the theme of overpopulation showing up in Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons" and "The Little Black Bag" which predate this novel. I thought his "Shark Ship" would predate, with its description of deviant, sado-masochist sex increasing due to population pressures, but the treatment of that idea here predates that story. The novel puts forth the idea that all sorts of extreme human behavior, including suicidal "death wish" behavior and sadomasochism sex, increases with population simply because the pool of people to draw from is larger. (There is a brief, but scary scene with sadistic torturer Hedy.) Of course, the critique of the conspicuous consumption aspect of capitalism goes back to Theodore Veblen. From interviews I've read, Kornbluth and Pohl probably came at this critique from two different directions. (Of course, Pohl would also deal with the theme in his famous "The Midas Plague".) Pohl is a liberal Democrat with early flirtations with Marxism. Kornbluth, according to his widow, regarded capitalism as the best possible system but definitely possessing flaws that needed correcting. The book seems timely because so many of the issues it deals with are still debated. At the beginning of the book, protagonist and "star class" copysmith, the narrator, calmly cites the articles of his pragmatic faith in sales as the highest good. His naïve faith -- at novel's end, he switches sides -- in the viability of his civilization and blithe complacency and ignorance that the environment and living conditions have gotten worse is well done. When he says, "Science is always a step ahead of the failure of natural resources." I was particularly reminded of the blithe and ignorant faith of conservatives that substitutes for energy resources are bound to be found or that all environmental degradation can be compensated for. Protagonist Courtenay confronts his once beloved boss with some hard truths: "The interests of producers and consumers are not identical; Most of the world is unhappy; Workmen don't automatically find the job they do best; Entrepreneurs don't play a hard, fair game by the rules." Courtenay learns these truths after being shanghaied into debt slavery working on a protein skimming farm. (I suspect the witty and clever depiction of the various shakedowns and extortions practiced by the corporation and its workers -- including the labor union -- there are Kornbluth's contribution.) To be sure, there is some truth here as well as in the accompanying axiom, stated elsewhere in the novel, that the world depends on constant consumption to keep things moving. Marketers do convince us to irrationally buy a lot of stuff we don't "need". As Courtenay notes, the best advertising works when people don't even know they're being pitched to. It also works using emotion. (To escape his debt bondage, Courtenay joins the Consies, a vast, underground movement of those who think the rule of corporations is devastating the planet. One of the first things he does is rewrite the hopelessly, to him, boring Consie propaganda which emphasizes reason.) But this critique of advertising, which emphasizes its implicit waste (in both producing the ads and the development and sale of competing products to meet the same ends and the obsolence of the old) ignores that advertising helps disseminate knowledge of products and that the competition to sell products results in the development of better products, some of which degrade the environment less. The debit side of the ledger noted in this book is true, but the positive side, which seems, so far, to more than compensate, is missing. And, of course, capitalism has a much better environmental record than other systems -- though part of that is through government regulation that, perhaps, would not have been embraced by a purer free market system. I'm not sure most people in a consumerist society are unhappy, though, in the world of this novel, they would be. It is true that capitalism certainly doesn't match talents and inclinations to jobs all that well -- but neither does any other system. However, this is one of those points capitalist apologists often ignore. Yes, some entrepreneurs don't play fair -- but the market often disciplines them. Consumers and producers don't have the same interests, true, but that's really only a problem if you assume one and only one transaction. Most individuals and companies are both consumers and producers, and so the system largely regulates itself. Still, senators referred to as, for instance, "the Senator from Du Pont Chemicals" resonate with a modern reader, even one not in favor of campaign finance. The marketing of whole constellations of products together rings true as do the planted news stories and what, today, would be called memes. The adulteration of products with addictive substances doesn't seem totally unrealistic -- though consumers today resist some products with things like nicotine and caffeine. Stylistically, this is a witty book, a very good example of the short, brisk novel that 50s' sf produced a lot of -- perhaps because it came out of magazine serial. The satire works well with the length and the pulpy elements of the Consie secret society, which Courtenay realizes, suddenly, his sympathies now lies since he spent time with the downtrodden, mere consumers. There area lot of good details here that would find there way into later overpopulation novels like Harry Harrison's Make Room! Make Room!. The metered scarcity of fresh water, people sleeping rented stairs, even the rich living in tiny apartments, wood being precious enough to make jewelry out of. There seems to be an element of physical decrepitude here. The hero has a hard time ascending thirty some flights of stairs. Sports are relegated to table top golf and tennis (I wonder if table top hockey and football games had just come out when this novel was written.) Pohl and Kornbluth's society is largely privatized. The Chamber of Commerce is the body of highest appeal, violation of a labor contract the highest sin. Police functions have been privatized. Corporations (and I wonder if this is one of the first stories to use this idea) formally declare lethal feuds on each other. (Though the evil Taunton ad agency, producer of sleazy, lowgrade products despised by Courtenay, who works for the competition, simply embarks on assassination without the legal formalities). Many of the companies, including United Parcel, are still familiar today. Outsourcing to India is a big topic today. Fifty-two years ago, Pohl and Kornbluth turned the whole country into the industrial organization known as "Indiastries". The only thing approaching a flaw is Courtenay's obsession with his temporarily contracted wife, Kathy, who turns out to be a Consie agent. Still, (and I liked the plot with Hester, hopelessly in love with her oblivious boss Courtenay, being forced into a sort of prostitution with corporate executives) there's no accounting for romantic obsessions. I laughed at the presence of a Maidenform exhibit in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Maidenform ad campaign was famous and made quite an impression at the time. In 1957, Vance Packard also cited in his famous anti-advertising The Hidden Persuaders.

The Merchants’ War, Frederik Pohl -- In some ways, this 1984 sequel to Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth’s 1952 The Space Merchants seems more dated than its predecessor. It seems more a creature of its time. Pohl has made reference to computers and animation (which reminds us that the original had neither -- possibly we are to infer that technology has advanced in the thirty years between the stories), but that doesn’t help. Two main things about the book make me think of 1984. First is the rather Cold War spy plot at the beginning and end with the substitution of a Venusian agent for Mitsui Ku. An Earth dominated by ad agencies versus the more backwards Venus, two power blocs with exclusive philosophies of life. Second is the well done plot of Tarb Tennison’s addiction to Mokie-Koke. It reminded me of the great concern paid drug addiction, particularly cocaine, in the early 80s. Pohl also adds a Cold War note -- and a prescient prophecy given that the Cold War was still going strong in 1984 -- by having the Russians join the hypertrophied capitalism of this novel. The plot was similar to The Space Merchants. Both had talented ad men getting involved, through romances with women who aren’t what they pretend to be, the opponents to the extreme capitalism of Earth, and eventually siding with that opposition and using their talents to serve it. However, here Pohl works some interesting twists on the plot of The Space Merchants. Both this novel’s protagonist, Tarb Tennison, and the protagonist of The Space Merchants, Mitchell Courtenay, are beaten down by circumstances, forced wanderings and livings amongst the consumer lower class, to realize some problems with the world and their view of it. Both surprise themselves with this realization though it may be too much to say they have epiphanies. However, the change in their beliefs is well-handled, and I think Pohl portrays human natural realistic when he has both suddenly realize they no longer believe what they once did. However, this novel has, even though it is not as good a novel, a more bitter satiric edge than its predecessors. Both copysmiths are forced from their comfortable lives. But Courtenay is shangaied because his Consie wife doesn’t want him killed by a rival ad agency. The darkest moment may come when Tennison, whose addiction is well done (I particularly liked the detox camp), decides to subvert the various addiction self-help groups into “substitution” therapy, in other words replacing the object of their addiction with another consumer good. The plots also deviate because, while both Courtenay and Tennison realize that the women they love have kept secrets, Tennsion comes to be belated (and the reader, as he notes, has already guessed this) realization that it is not even, physically, the same woman. But he seems to have imprinted on her image (a very sly take on branding perhaps?) and accepts the substitute Ku (sort of a manifestation of his own substitution therapy). Tennison does not fully side with Venusians either. He rejects their clumsy lies and hatred of the Earthmen and launches a subversion campaign based on simply telling the truth. (Sort of a “third way” which further brings up Cold War resonances.) There is an implicit criticism of the end of The Space Merchants. Tennison says Courtenay ran away from the Earth. He is staying to make it a better place. Unlike Courtenay, he also enlists a lot of people who aren’t Venusians or their agents but who have suffered under the regime or who are (like the meat eating Gert) too eccentric to live under it unmolested. I think the main reason the novel isn’t as good as the first is not the lack of bitter satire -- it’s here, or the plot, but that it isn’t as witty. There are few explicitly detailed ad campaigns unlike The Space Merchants which leads me to believe that, even though Pohl was the ex-adman, Kornbluth contributed that part or that Pohl thought, thirty two years later, that he was no longer in touch enough with the mechanics of advertising to pull off a detailed satire again. show less

This repulsively occluded crystal of a book is not about werewolves of the transform-into-canine sort, but about human wolves who are a bane almost 300 years into a future earth rent from the solar system on which humans have devolved not into savagery but into an ultra-civilized society, the formalities of which would make Genji's court look like yahoos. The climax is near perfect, the ending a disagreeable muddle.

A rocketing, sensational exposé of sin in space: a story about a drug deadlier than heroin, more vicious than morphine, this was the Martian narcotic that drenched a planet in crime and perversion.

This was the blurb that screamed from the back cover of the Galaxy re-publication of the novel written by husband and wife writing team Cyril M. Kornbluth and Judith Merril which was originally serialised in 1951. The blurb in this case is totally misleading as I have rarely read such a 'grown show more up' thoughtful novel from this era of pulp fiction.

Sin in Space was the 1961 reprint, but the original story had the title of Mars child, then [Outpost Mars]. The story starts with a difficult birth of a child in a struggling close knit human colony on the planet Mars: not so many science fiction books would have started with a birth scene. Tony Hellman is the doctor in attendance and he is also part of the democratically elected ruling committee of the community of Sun Lake. It is a community that prides itself on its complete sexual equality and is desperately trying to be self sufficient so that it can loosen its ties with an overcrowded and corrupt planet earth. The birth of a child is a big event in the colony which relies on drugs to enable them to breathe a rarefied atmosphere. The community receives a visit from the nearby Brenner Pharmaceutical corporation: an industrial concern that manufacture the addictive drug Marcaine. Brenner accuses the community of stealing a shipment of his drugs and demands that a search be carried out for the guilty culprit. Brenner knows that such a search would cause the release of radioactive material which could destroy the colony. The arrival in the twice yearly rocket supply ship from earth of journalist Douglas Graham, who is planning a feature book on the life of the planet, becomes a focal point for the struggle between the colony and the industrialists.

This is a well written story that also describes the hard grind of a relatively new colony trying to forge its own future on a planet where life is difficult, but whose participants have sacrificed everything to escape from planet earth. The birth of the Mars child proves to be a significant event in the life of the community and in accordance with the aims of the community the novel provides equal opportunity for both women and men to play significant roles. It is pulp fiction, but still a refreshingly good read and so 4 stars. show less