C. M. Kornbluth (1923–1958)

review of
Frederik Pohl & C. M. Kornbluth's Gladiator-At-Law
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 13, 2012

This is the 3rd Pohl/Kornbluth collaboration I've read so far. W/ each new one I'm more & more impressed by their skill at social analysis & at their ability to just tell an engrossing tale. Reading this one led me to compare them to Aldous Huxley & the comparison's in their favor. When I was a teenager & 1st hearing about what I'd now call dystopian novels or social critique or show more prophesy novels, I heard of George Orwell's 1984, Huxley's Brave New World, & Ayn Rand's Anthem. I read all 3. That was something like 40 yrs ago.

Much more recently, I listened to an old radio program of Huxley reading Brave New World &/or talking about it & I was surprised to find the main thrust be a theme of state-enforced-sexual-promiscuity. Maybe that's only one aspect of Brave New World but it seemed a little odd as an emphasis - kindof like: look-what-these-godless-commies-are-going-to-make-you-do. Anyway, Huxley wrote 'serious literature' & Kornbluth & Pohl wrote 'pulp sci-fi' so they probably weren't taken as seriously. The thing is that Gladiator-At-Law, despite its seemingly trashy title, strikes me as a much less trite social critique than Brave New World may have been.

If this is a "What If?" type of novel, the fuller question might be: What if people were to invent a solution to one of mankind's problems, in this case housing, & that solution were to be commandeered in the interest of greed? The answer is: corporations will get very rich providing good housing but at a cost of only allowing people to live in it that go along w/ the company-store style program. Everyone else has to live in dangerous run-down areas.

& there're plenty of great details & characters to flesh out this premise. At the beginning, the reader witnesses a severe penalty given to someone who steals from a stadium. It's obvious that stadiums & 'sports' are 'sacred'. Why? B/c the oppressive corporate-run society uses bread & circuses / shock & awe to keep the masses 'in their place' in more ways than one. Is this really so different from now? Not from my POV.

One of the main sortof comic relief villains works for a company that was formerly I. G. Farben. I. G. Farben, of course, used concentration camp victims for slave labor amongst many other war crimes. This sets the mood - but not every reader will understand this.

The inventor of the housing solution 'hung himself in his cell' when he was falsely arrested after he was basically driven out of the company he created. I was once told by the police that I was "the kinda guy who hangs himself in his cell." I, too, was arrested on false charges. This story rang all too true for me.

Even Anaconda Copper, an old villain in the annals of labor & ecology activists, makes a cameo appearance. As the lawyer protagonist is being advised on how to proceed against the offending mega-corporation, this dialog occurs:

"'Just keep your head, and remember the essential nature of a great private utility corporation.'

"'A legal entity,' guessed Mundin, 'A fictive person.'

"'No, boy.' The old eyes were gleaming in the ruined face. 'Forget that. Think of an oriental court. A battlefield; a government; a poker game that never ends. The essence of a corporation is the subtle flux of power, now thrusting this man up, now smiting this group low.'"

Notice that in the latter example, it's a single person who rises up & multitudes who suffer. I'm giving this bk a 5 star rating not b/c I think it's the equivalent of Finnegans Wake as a work of great writing but b/c I think that the authors of SF shd get credit for doing what they often do astonishingly well: see the present w/ great clarity & warn us about its future. Unfortunately for the general populace, 57 yrs after this bk was written in 1955, corporations seem to have gotten closer to the dystopic possibilities explored in this bk - rather than further away.

Interestingly, Gladiator-At-Law was published by Bantam & so was Brave New World. But Huxley's bk is touted as a "modern classic" while this is just categorized as "science fiction". Given that Pohl was "science fiction editor of Bantam Books" as of the January, 1977 edition of this that the quoted biographical entry is in, maybe that's one of the main reasons why the bk cd even get published at all. 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

review of
Frederik Pohl & C. M. Kornbluth's Search the Sky
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 28, 2011

Reading this is my idea of a good time. I was most reminded of Gulliver's Travels - a journey to various extraordinary societies, each an exaggeration for satire's sake. A businessman on "Halsey's Planet" notices that the society around him is decaying. He gets thrust into a faster-than-light travel adventure to other planets in other solar systems in search of symptoms of a similar show more decay elsewhere & in search of a solution.

W/o giving away too much of the plot, I will address the 2nd planet: a matriarchy. I suspect this has been taken as misogynistic by many people but I'd have to disagree. 1st, as an anarchist, I think matriarchy is just as reprehensible as patriarchy. Since most people I know seem to think that there're only patriarchies in the world, they also seem to think that matriarchies are a viable alternative. I disagree. Power corrupts. EVERYONE. Kornbluth & Pohl depict the matriarchy as being partially based on the belief that b/c most women are smaller than men, & therefore less capable of hard manual labor, that they are, therefore, natural supervisors. I've met entirely too many women like this who've treated me, personally, as some sort of servant w/o even having any idea of who I am - just b/c I'm a man who fits their stereotype of subhuman.

But keep in mind that this is parody. The protagonist is not particularly intelligent so when he 1st encounters a woman from this matriarchy & thinks: "Not a very attractive woman, for she wore no make-up" he's expressed the sexist bias of the culture he comes from & not necessarily those of the authors. 20pp later when he thinks: "How could any female - no single member of which class had ever painted a great picture, written a great book, composed a great sonata, or discovered a great scientific truth - appreciate the ultimate importance of the F[aster]-T[han]-L[ight] drive?" the joke is ultimately on him (& on the reader) as later events will attest. B/c 12pp later there's "In his snobbishness he never realized that he was guilty of the most frightful arrogance in assuming that what he could do, she could not."

Near the end of the bk, on a planet at 1st mistaken for the legendary "Earth", an ancient text called "Ultra-Jones-Ism, An Infantile Political Disorder" is mentioned in passing. This is, most likely, a parody of Lenin's "Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder: A Popular Essay in Marxian Strategy and Tactics" (see GoodReads reviews of this latter here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483137.Left_Wing_Communism_an_Infantile_Disor... ). show less