This year saw the passing of one of my all time favorite authors, the SF/Fantasy master Jack Vance. Well, another of the greats has shuffled off this mortal coil. Frederik Pohl, noted publisher, editor, and author has left this world and, somewhat to my shame, I hadn't been aware that he was still with us.
One of Pohl's greatest works is The Space Merchants, a scarily prescient 1952 satire written in collaboration with Cyril M. Kornbluth. The book presents a view of a society in which megacorporations run things and marketing is a powerful force, conducted in ruthless fashion:
"Well, about this Coffiest," he said. "We're sampling it in fifteen key cities. It's the usual offer --- a thirteen week supply of Coffiest, one thousand dollars in cash, and a weekend vacation on the Ligurian Riviera to everybody who comes in. But --- and here's what makes the campaign truly great, in my estimation --- each sample of Coffiest contains three milligrams of a simple alkaloid. Nothing harmful. But definitely habit-forming. After ten weeks the customer is hooked for life. It would cost him at least five thousand dollars for a cure, so its simpler for him to go right on drinking Coffiest --- three cups with every meal and a pot beside his bed at night, just as it says on the jar."
One of Pohl's most accessible works is The Day the Icicle Works Closed, another depressingly prescient short story about a society gripped by a depression kicked off by the collapse of its greatest industry, which leads to a sharp divide between the haves and the have-nots. The story was reviewed by a blogger of note, and can be read here. The Liverpudlian band The Icicle Works took their name from this short story.
Rest in Peace, Mr Pohl... your ability to predict the foibles of society was unparalleled. Truly, we're living in the future you predicted.
Driftglass gets it...
ReplyDeleteIt is, in other words, the story of a plot hatched between local plutocrats and media moguls to deliberately crash a thriving middle class manufacturing economy and induce a Depression in order to turn a prosperous world into a feudal state divided between the super-rich and horde of desperate and permanently poor peons; people so broke in an economy so bad that they must now “rent” their bodies out to make a living, or turn and criminals.
But he also doesn't get it.
Republicans alone can't get us to our Icicle Works future.
It takes cynical neoliberals like Obama, whenever the people somehow wake up to a sufficient extent to vote the GOP out of office, to proceed with the plutocracy's plans.
~
My favorite of all the Futurians/active-before-WWII writers. And no doubt the very last of them.
ReplyDeleteRepublicans alone can't get us to our Icicle Works future.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it also takes an inactive public. The real divide isn't left/right, but rich/poor, and the rich have stacked the deck.
My favorite of all the Futurians/active-before-WWII writers. And no doubt the very last of them.
Could there be another holdout? Like I wrote, I wasn't even aware that Pohl was still alive.