The Space Merchants

This follows Mitchell Courtenay, and the television series Mad Men has nothing on this advertising executive of the future trying to sell the idea of colonizing Venus. This is a world where Advertising executives are the ruling class--and the rest of the gray mass are "consumers."

OK, at the risk of being labeled a capitalist tool without a sense of humor, I have to admit I don't like this book, while seeing while it may appeal to some. This is a sharp satire of consumer culture and capitalism, and unlike many a science fiction work of its era, it's not too dated--some parts very current. I think because the critics of capitalism have been saying the same thing about it--and it's defenders--forever. I'm no fan really of the kind of books show more that make Big Business the villain, I'm rather sick of them and how predictable they read, but mostly I was amused not irritated in the first half--I found this particular passage...well, resonant of attitudes of some:

The Conservationists were fair game, those wild-eyed zealots who pretended modern civilization was in some way "plundering" our planet. Preposterous stuff. Science is always a step ahead of the failure of natural resources. After all, when meat got scarce, we had soyburgers ready. When oil ran low, technology developed the pedicab.

And the picture Pohl and Kornbluth painted of a dystopic society was imaginative--even if I was sick of the gazillionth novel that tells us our future is soy burgers--although this should be forgiven because back then it might have been original. This was published in 1952. What made me lose patience actually is when the authors gave us a bit of the Consies (the Conservationists) Samizdat. The rift on demanding "planning of population, reforestation, soil-building, deurbanization, and the end to the wasteful production of gadgets" *clutches etablet* made me think of the Unabomber's treatise--and these are obviously supposed to be the good guys. The novel just stopped being even a little bit fun for me after absorbing that. I think if it had stuck to a satirical view of selling Venus, I'd have enjoyed it more, and even mulled over its points more. I think Sayers' Murder Must Advertise is a funnier, and more effective, critique of the advertising world. Bottom line: I can't honestly say I like this novel, even though I could see recommending it to a friend who finds this worldview more congenial. show less

Clever especially for when it was written. Similar to Company by Max Barry. Advertising Companies control most things and Venus is the next frontier. Which agency get/keeps the contract, who controls it within the business. How is it sold as a destination to Consumers. It's cut throat. Clever and funny, in a tongue in cheek way.

This is one of the classics of the genre during the early 50s (in fact, it was included in the Library of America omnibus American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels 1953-1956). I'll admit that I thought it was going to be about a trading spaceship visiting different planets, but it's nothing like that. The book is set in a near future (for the 50s) where humans live in a dystopian society, heavily controlled by corporations and where the environment is very deteriorated. In fact, environmentalists are considered social deviants and ruthlessly persecuted. A big corporation specializing in marketing buys the contract for the colonization of Venus (which in the book is a very inhospitable planet but not as much as we now know it to be). show more The first thing they need to do is create a marketing campaign to convince people that they want to volunteer as colonists. We follow the point of view of the executive in charge of this campaign. In the meantime, there are plots by commercial rivals and by an underground environmentalist organization that try to interfere.

One problem with SF written before the computer era is that the futures they depict fail to predict how ubiquitous computers have now become, and the implications for humanity. I do not really consider this a failure, because these people are writers, not fortune tellers, but when reading it it's true that nowadays we need to suspend disbelief in this sense and accept this "retrofuture" with no internet and no smartphones. Also, socially it's extrapolated from the 50s, so the marketing companies depicted work a bit like what we see in the Mad Men TV show.

Pohl did work as a marketing copy writer, so he knows his stuff and it shows. The dystopian element is also very relevant now, with echoes of Huxley's Brave New World. Unlike Brave New World, this novel adds a thriller/action plot, so it's not going to be considered respectable literature. It's well-written, and although it does have outdated elements I still thought it entertaining and worth-reading, particularly if you enjoy classic SF. show less

When Advertising Rules the World

The dystopian satire The Space Merchants ranks as one of the best Science Fiction novels of all time, compared in importance to Brave New World by some critics for good reason. Pohl (1919-2013) and Kornbluth (1923-1958) present a plausible world of extreme consumerism in which the ne plus ultra profession is advertising, because of its power to convince consumers, the people, that they live in a Panglossian best of all possible worlds. It diverts their attention from reality, that they really live in a world plagued by overpopulation, environmental ruin, gross inequality, and scarcity of basic resources, a world in which corporations and wealth reign supreme. These themes remain with us to this day and show more though some have been mitigated all remain urgent issues worldwide.

Mitch Courtenay is a star-class copywriter at one of the most prominent and powerful ad agencies, Fowler Schocken. This puts him at the pinnacle of the agency and the corporate world that controls the U.S. (though he can only afford an apartment about the size of a closet). Through much skullduggery, the business process of the day, Fowler Schocken wins the right to colonize and then exploit the resources of Venus. Mitch gets the assignment of persuading consumers that Venus is a potential paradise, a place where they can have everything they can’t have on Earth. Mitch, though, faces two problems: his rivals within his own agency and a competing mega agency, and the desire to resume his relationship with Kathy before their one-year trial marriage contract expires. As Mitch ramps up the project and courts Kathy, he finds himself shanghaied, stripped of his identity and status, and shipped off to a food processing colony in Central America.

There he hooks up with the bane of the advertising and corporate elite, the consies. The consies, slag for conservationists, are an underground radical movement that stand in direct opposition to every thing the corporate elite promote. They seek a world with clean air and water and basic equality. He decides to join up as a ploy to get back to New York and reestablish himself at Fowler Schocken and take his revenge on his opponents. However, the table turns on him when he discovers that, among other things, Kathy is a leading consie and that the wedge between them has been his loyalty to a debased system. In the end, he wins back his leadership position and uses it to give Kathy what she most desires, the right to colonize Venus as a consie world. The novel concludes on Venus with their relationship restored, a new world growing, and Mitch as just an ordinary guy.

The pleasure of the novel isn’t so much the intrigue, of which there is plenty, but the graphic world portrayed by Pohl and Kornbluth, best epitomized by extreme branding and loyalty to brands and products like coffiest, a narcotic based version of coffee that like cigarettes addicts consumers from childhood to death. Even if you are not ordinarily a fan of the Science Fiction genre, you may enjoy the authors’ extrapolation of a consumerist society gone wild. show less

En un futuro cercano, surge el Proyecto Venus, que tiene como misión colonizar dicho planeta. La Tierra está superpoblada y sobreexplotada y está dominada por grandes corporaciones publicitarias. El mundo se divide en Consumidores, Productores y Ejecutivos. Es entonces cuando surge la gran oportunidad para las empresas de publicidad: dirigir la campaña para potenciar la colonización de Venus. Dicho contrato al final ha caído en manos de la Sociedad Fowler Schocken, a la que pertenece el protagonista y narrador de la novela, Mitchell Courtenay, alto ejecutivo al que se le asigna el Proyecto Venus.

‘Mercaderes del espacio’ (The Space Merchants, 1954), escrita por Frederik Pohl y C.M. Kornbluth, es una visión satírica de una show more sociedad mercantilista y consumista hasta el exceso. Quizá haya personajes y situaciones que hayan envejecido mal, pero sigue siendo una gran novela de ciencia ficción, escrita con gran ritmo, inteligencia e imaginación: estrategias, conspiraciones, política, terroristas, conservacionistas, etc. La historia contiene pasajes que dejan huella, como el de La Gallina. El final, algo precipitado, deja con ganas de más. show less

The Space Merchants is rightly considered a science fiction classic. Mitchell Courtenay is a successful ad-man in a world run by ad-men, who finds himself discredited and on the run. He avoids assassination attempts and suffers the unpleasant experience of learning how the "other" half (i.e., consumers) live. The book is a pretty blunt indictment of American consumerism, envisioning a dystopian society driven by corporations that use advertising to create consumer needs (for such useful things as "Kiddiebutt" cigarettes for kids).

When I first read it, I found it to be a reasonably entertaining yarn, but somewhat dated. But it's turned out to be one of those books with ideas and images that keep popping up in my memory ("Chicken show more Little", anyone?). Looking back, I wonder whether I wasn't a bit naive in my initial assessment--in a society where the government helps companies make record profits at the expense of taxpayers and the environment, and those companies and their executives turn around and give massive contributions back to the politicians who run the government, Pohl and Kornbluth's vision of "the Senator from Du Pont" doesn't really seem so far fetched. show less

2.5/5

A classic from the post WWII era that perhaps has lost a lot of its charm in the ensuing 80 years since. Nevertheless, The Space Merchants displays the archetype of a capitalistic hellscape that many writers would borrow from for a long time.

Here, advertising is king, and the top firms operate what amounts to their own fiefdoms, more powerful than government or God. Our main character is one of top executives at one of these firms, and as such has all of the privileges that make his life in this world (where fresh water, clean air, square footage, and real meat) are luxuries that few can ever hope to afford. His position is thrown into flux when his firm settles on trying to populate Venus for their own benefit through the standard show more set of morally gray and reprehensible tactics, and when they put him in charge of the operation. The other large advertising firm doesn't take too kindly to this, and doesn't hesitate to use bureaucratic assassination, which is legal. This is to say nothing of the 'Consies', or conservationists, who are deemed as a terrorist organization, but seem to be the only group who is fighting to end the capitalist system, and fight for the unwashed, proletariat masses, or as their know here: consumers.

Since The Space Merchants was written by two authors, there's an unevenness to both the quality and tone of the writing that made it hard to get settled into the text. The section that was mostly written by Kornbluth, when Courtenay is cast off into a low-level consumer job, tends to be pretty decent. Kornbluth writes with a darker, biting style in comparison to Pohl's sections that were mostly colored by his insistence on smarmy sarcasm. The satire on display is sometimes good, sometimes heavy-handed. Neither writer blew me away, but Kornbluth certainly seems a cut above a lot of his golden age SF peers. I enjoyed the creativity and animosity he showed.

Honestly, this just feels pretty forgettable to me. Sure, there are standouts. I really enjoyed the word-building. I enjoyed seeing this dystopia from both sides of the divide in such a detailed way. It's admirable that there are many terms used today that were coined here first (sucker-trap, R &D, muzak). But beyond these few bright spots, I can't point to anything I cared for all that much. The characters were either cardboard or grating. The choice to not only write women dreadfully, but also the depiction of the character who happened to be a little person was, I think even at the time it was written, hopelessly offensive. The plot moves along okay, but too much time is spend dawdling on a love interest that can't possibly be engaging to anyone other than a 14 year old boy.

Glad to have read it in a completionist sense, but if you're just looking to just read something good, I'd skip this one. show less