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The Space Merchants
  

The Space Merchants (Paperback)

by Frederik Pohl (Author), C.M. Kornbluth (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 176 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New impression edition (28 Jun 1973)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0140022244
  • ISBN-13: 978-0140022247
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,236,914 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #57 in  Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Authors, A-Z > P > Pohl, Frederik

Product Description

Product Description
It is the 20th Century, an advertisement-drenched world in which the big ad agencies dominate governments and everything else. Now Schoken Associates, one of the big players, has a new challenge for star copywriter Mitch Courtenay. Volunteers are needed to colonise Venus. It's a hellhole, and nobody who knew anything about it would dream of signing up. But by the time Mitch has finished, they will be queuing to get on board the spaceships. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author
Pohl and Kornbluth started writing together as early as 1940, although both authors produced a wide variety of stories separately, under their own names and psuedonyms. Each wrote sections, starting where the other left off, and through long experience they developed an almost telepathic awareness of each other's intentions. Frederik Pohl was born in 1919 and has been professionally involved in sf as an editor and writer since his teens. Among his many books are A Plague of Pythons, Gateway, Man Plus and JEM: The Making of a Utopia. C.M. Kornbluth (1923-1958) was the bureau chief of a Chicago news agency until 1951 when he took up fiction writing full time. He established himself very quickly as a brilliant short-story writer with works such as 'The Little Black Bag', 'The Marching Morons', 'The Cosmic Charge Account' and 'Two Dooms'. Pohl and Kornbluth started writing stories together in 1940 and their collaborations include The Space Merchants, Search the Sky and Gladiators-at-Law. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Customer Reviews

6 Reviews
5 star:
 (2)
4 star:
 (3)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Serise delivers another gem, 7 Feb 2004
This book is amazing. It is a keen satire on the rise of advertising and rampant consumerism, writen nearly 50 years ago.

Fair enough, the ending is slightly limp but the whole story and the vivid characterisation, (lovely use of the unsympathetic protagonist), all add up to a really fantastic read. It isn't boring, I could have finished it the day I started if I hadn't been doing anything else.
If you like astute well writen intellegent and exciting fiction (science fiction or otherwise) you'll like this.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Short and sweet - 4.5 stars!, 31 Jan 2006
By A. Morley (Ripley, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
The Space Merchants is a superb little novel that can be enjoyed relatively quickly by all ages. It is a fast-paced, lesser-known book that is rightly part of the SF Masterworks series and indeed is considered by some to be in the top 20 sci-fi books of all time.

Mitch Courtenay is a star-class copywriter in the Fowler Schocken advertising agency who has been tasked with turning Venus into an attractive proposition for potential colonists. This much is known if you read the blurb at the back of the book but I was surprised at how much it deviated away from this and went into the realms of class-differences, environmentalism and corporate back-stabbing. Some of the ideas in this book may seem dated but it does feature two of the most original and interesting characters in any story. Jack O’Shea is a dwarf who was the first man on Venus who is now taking revenge on women who spurned him all his life by sleeping with many as possible. Chicken Little is a 15 yard wide living piece of protein that is routinely sliced to feed workers. I guess having two authors means twice the imagination!

The story is told from Mitch’s point of view which for its short length is perfect and I disagree with a previous comment that it felt laboured. I found the writing style to be perfectly adequate; it was witty, smart and sometimes completely irreverent which in the sometimes overly-serious world of science fiction I found wonderfully refreshing. Perhaps the only weakness I can see is that the characterization sometimes suffers especially as there are quite few of them over the course of 190-odd pages.

The corporate world features quite extensively throughout the novel and can be compared to Alfred Bester’s classic The Demolished Man.

Highly recommended.

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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Criticism of Modern Consumer Society, 13 Sep 2003
Like the title of this review says the book is excellent. It is a critic of modern society but it avoids politicizing the issue and just makes some thoughtful remarks. Don't be mistaken it is critical, but not in the traditional right or left sense. It is more humanist I believe. Anyhow, the book is great and there is a compelling story to keep you interested. It's not all critic. There is a good story in there. If you've read "1984", "Brave New World" or "Fahrenheit 451" this is a logical follow up.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Flawed classic
The satirical future setting, in which corporate interests have taken over the world, is a little heavy-handed ("You know the old saying. Power ennobles. Read more
Published on 27 Oct 2006 by Nicholas Whyte

3.0 out of 5 stars Alright, but not really my thing
This book was OK, but I probably found it one of the least of the enjoyable of the 'SF masterworks' series. Read more
Published on 31 Dec 2003 by Johnny London

5.0 out of 5 stars 1 of the most prescient books I've read - please read it!
I first read this book twenty years ago and have just re-read it. It was written in the early fifties and describes what could arguably be described as the inevitable... Read more
Published on 12 Dec 2001

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