The Space Merchants, Frederik Pohl
The Space Merchants, Frederik Pohl
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The Space Merchants

Author: Frederik Pohl, C. M. Kornbluth

Narrator: Dan Bittner

Unabridged: 6 hr 1 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/06/2011


Synopsis

In a vastly overpopulated near-future world, businesses have taken the place of governments and now hold all political power. States exist merely to ensure the survival of huge transnational corporations. Advertising has become hugely aggressive and boasts some of the world's most powerful executives.

Through advertising, the public is constantly deluded into thinking that all the products on the market improve the quality of life. However, the most basic elements are incredibly scarce, including water and fuel.

The planet Venus has just been visited and judged fit for human settlement, despite its inhospitable surface and climate; colonists would have to endure a harsh climate for many generations until the planet could be terraformed.

Mitch Courtenay is a star-class copywriter in the Fowler Schocken advertising agency and has been assigned the ad campaign that would attract colonists to Venus, but a lot more is happening than he knows about. Mitch is soon thrown into a world of danger, mystery, and intrigue, where the people in his life are never quite what they seem, and his loyalties and core beliefs will be put to the test in Frederik Pohl's novel The Space Merchants.

About Frederik Pohl

Frederik Pohl (1919-2013) was one of science fiction's most important authors. Among his many novels are Gateway, which won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Hugo Award, the Locus SF Award, and the Nebula Award, Beyond the Blue Event Horizon, which was a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and Jem, which won the 1980 National Book Award in Science Fiction. He also collaborated on classic science fiction novels including The Space Merchants with Cyril M. Kornbluth. Pohl was an award-winning editor of Galaxy and If, a book editor at Bantam, and served as president of the Science Fiction Writers of America. He was named a Grand Master of Science Fiction by SFWA in 1993, and was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

About Dan Bittner

Dan Bittner has narrated dozens of audio books and has starred on stage and on the screen, in movies such as Men in Black, Adventureland, and the Producers: The Movie Musical. He has also appeared onstage as Macbeth Malcolm and Sherlock Holmes in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He has narrated popular audio books such as The Eleventh Plague, Hero, and Forever.

About C. M. Kornbluth

C.M. Kornbluth (1923-1958) is a science fiction author, best known for the novel The Space Merchants, with Frederik Pohl.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Bill on March 30, 2019

Are you one of those people who miss Madmen desperately? Do you also have a taste for classic science fiction? If so, here is a book that could have been created just for you. Published in 1953, The Space Merchants tells the story of the USA some centuries hence, a land still stuck in the morals and......more

Goodreads review by Mario the lone bookwolf on January 19, 2023

The groundbreaking initialization of the dystopic, satirical big bad government military industrial complex sci-fi subgenre, inspiring cyberpunk and modern sci-fi writers such as Richard Morgan and Daniel Suarez Corporatism aka Corporatocracy All humans are consumers and their status, possibilities,......more

Goodreads review by Jim on August 09, 2023

Classic science fiction from the 50s, by one of the great writing teams of SF, Fred Pohl (1919-2013) and Cyril M. Kornbluth (1923-1958). And a great example of social satire in the tradition of Jonathan Swift, author of "Gulliver's Travels." It's set in the world of the 22nd Century, when Earth is a......more

Goodreads review by Jim on April 21, 2017

A satire of the future where commercialism is king, the raison d'etre. Unfortunately, the 1950s vibe set several centuries in the future & heavy-handed treatment made it too slapstick for me most of the time. Also, the main character (certainly no hero) was just too conveniently clueless & brilliant......more


Quotes

“A novel of the future that the present must inevitably rank as a classic.” —The New York Times