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Summary: Shockingly accurate
Review: After all the hype of globalisation this book saw its inevitability forty seven years ago. Brand names and consumer behaviour. Nothing is new under Kornbluth and Pohl's sun. There are no new tricks in marketing, just lots of academic researchers beavering away to give arcane names to obvious psychological tricks perpetrated since the 1920s. It explains why so many westerners feel powerless and end up seeking solace in Buddhism. Pohl and Kornbluth must have been reading a lot of Swift to write such a misanthropic classic. Sadly, there are lots of pop-psychology books sold by Amazon.com advising of the evils of marketing. This book does it so much better and funnier. Why is it out of print?
Rating:
Summary: A good, fast read.
Review: An over the top satire (written in the 50s) about a worldculture that is completely dominated by advertising. My favorite bit (that isn't a spoiler) is "Kiddiebutt" cigarette rations in school lunches!!
Rating:
Summary: A fast, ruthless classic that's hasn't lost it's bite.
Review: Classic 50's action sci-fi. Lots of action around one facet of our lives (advertisment) that's been blown out of proportion.
Though the characters don't have a real personality of their own, the conflicts that throw the hero between diffferent roles, easily fill that need. And those changes from happy personality-less opressor to opressed (and depressed) and so-on, have some hillarious scenes. Can you guess how big "chicken little" is
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Summary: One of the All-Time SF Greats
Review: He has been largely forgotten by the mainstream now, but C.M. (Cyril) Kornbluth was one of the giants of science fiction. He was just hitting his stride when cancer claimed him in 1958 at the age of 35. "The Space Merchants," a collaboration with the legendary Frederick Pohl, has been rated one of the seminal works in the entire field. A quick look at the logo-addicted styles of today will show you just how on-target Kornbluth and Pohl were four decades ago. If you enjoy reading "The Space Merchants," I suggest you prowl the used-book stores for a copy of Kornbluth's "The Syndic," another satire.
Rating:
Summary: Superb -Pohl's best work
Review: I bought this book but put it aside for a couple of years until finding it again. I decided to read it. Boy was I in for a surprise! This is a great Scifi novel, better than anything else I've read by Pohl. Definitely one of my top 5 favorite Scifi novels of all time.
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Summary: Big Business keeping us down...
Review: I had to read this for Dr. Frost's SciFi class. In the beginning I had my doubts. I don't think I actually finished it in time for the test. The important thing is that the story stayed in my mind, bouncing around back there any time I had a desperate craving for a coke, a bag of chips, or a cigarette. It bothered me when I cut up chicken and when I saw anyone dressed in clothes all from the same clothing company, it's logo blazing across every material surface. Drives me nuts. I buy generic now. Just because. Oh... and I eventually finished it and have reread it several times since.
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Summary: One of my top ten favorite SF novels
Review: I think if I hadn't read John Clute's SF Encyclopedia, I would have missed out on this amazingly entertaining novel. The very title--"The Space Merchants"--sounds an awful lot like lame space opera (which I loathe), but that couldn't be further from the truth. Pohl and Kornbluth's masterpiece (and their first collaboration) is a cutting-edge satire of class and mass media that as biting in 1998 as it was back in 1953. I can't believe the rest of Pohl and Kornbluth's collaborations (or Kornbluth's solo novels, for that matter) aren't still in print.
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Summary: Proto-cyberpunk
Review: I was just staggered at the prophetic qualities of this book. The satire on advertising may have seemed ridiculous at the time but now it seems to predict a cyberpunk society long before it was ever imagined - just without the computers. One of the best 50s sf novels I've had the pleasure to read.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious! A Great Read
Review: I was talking to a co-worker who mentioned that Pizza Hut is now purchasing advertising on the side of a rocket. If Fredrick Pohl wasn't prophetic, I don't know who is. The addictive soda pop, the advertisements on the retina, chicken little, etc, are just too funny for words. Unfortunately, this wonderful book is out of print, so I can't tell my Generation-X coworker to read it, which is too bad because you can easily draw parallels to today's society -- and this was written in the 50's! If you get your hands on this gem, read it, it will be well worth the effort.
Rating:
Summary: space merchants still rule
Review: I'd forgotten how good this was until I was reminded by a few extracts available on the web! I read it several decades ago, and though some of the science (inhabitable Venus etc) has dated, the basic theme of brainwashed consumerism is (if possible) even more realistic now when it was written! Sociological SF at its finest! Amazon: get this back in print! Please? I want to replace my lost copy....
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