Will I love The Space Merchants?

Pohl drew heavily on his experience as an advertising copywriter in this, perhaps his most famous novel co-written with C.M. Kornbluth. Although not directly set on a colonized world, it’s easily one of the darkest takes on the subject as the protagonist, a ‘star-class copysmith’ is given the job of selling people on the idea of emigrating to Venus…while carefully avoiding the reality of Venus being barely, if at all, habitable, with nothing to promise but a harsh existence and generations of toil before the planet can be fully terraformed.

The world is a playground for advertisers. Human beings are assigned jobs based on their worth to society, which is determined externally. Factory farming simultaneously causes undue amounts of human, animal, and environmental suffering while keeping people fed. The climate crisis is in full swing. Overpopulation threatens to overwhelm key infrastructure. Greed rules all.

Sound familiar? Perhaps it didn’t all the way back in 1952, when The Space Merchants, penned by an ad man and a Futurian in collaboration, first appeared. Smart, quick, and incisive (though unfortunately more than a little sexist), this novel paved the way for the… show more.