1952.
186 pages.
Gollancz SF Masterworks paperback (2003).

In the 22nd century the people’s representatives in the American legislature have been replaced by those of the corporations, who in their turn are the clients of a few big, competing advertisement companies whose only concern is Sales. The citizens are no longer that; they are exclusively consumers, conditioned to unthinking consumerism by the ad firms, and awarded limited rights according to their place in the hierarchy of production — a hierarchy 19th century socialists would have recognised and raised their hackles at.

Mitchell Courtenay is close to the top. He is a starlet copywriter at Schocken Associates, one of America’s two largest ad companies, and his company’s latest contract is bound to secure his position for life. It has been decided that humankind is ready to colonise another planet, and the lucky celestial body is Venus. Naturally, the planet’s an inferno, and no one in their right mind would go there voluntarily. The expertise of the advertisement industry is needed, and when Schocken wins the contract to promote Venus as a paradise, Mitch is put in charge of the Venus Project. However, it does not take long for things to begin going awry, and Mitch suspects sabotage, either by Schocken’s fiercest competitor, or by the underground terrorist network of the environmentalist Consies. He initiates an investigation, but before he gets very far with it even more goes awry and hilarity ensues. (At least if you think kinda horrible stuff is funny; we cater to the loonies here at Thus Spoketh today.)

The Space Merchants is supposedly the best example of the 1950s social science fiction. Rather than being overly concerned with technological developments and how these might impact human life, the authors try to imagine how a future where commercialism has been taken to its limits might look, and what this might have done to our societies. They do so without straying out into the realms of the dystopia, at least not the most extreme areas, as the society (or rather the world; while the action is centred mainly in and around the US, we get the occasional hint at what has happened elsewhere, too, particularly India) depicted is far from all bad. It might be fundamentally wrong and not too attractive for most people today, but it is still pretty far from for instance the totalitarian dystopias of George Orwell or Aldous Huxley.

It’s not a very well-paced novel, though. The first seventy pages or so, where we’re following Mitch around his work on the Venus Project, was very close to being just a long yawn. The plot got vastly more interesting as soon as things started to go wrong, though, as they’re wont to do, and the middle part of the novel was quite enjoyable. Of course, the main character mostly acted like a vain, ignorant fool who only had knowledge about advertisement (he did know that, though; the parts where he was planning the ad campaign of the Venus Project was actually fun), but I guess that’s how it’s supposed really, and that the only readers who expect otherwise are us numbnuts too used to the tropes of the various kinds of heroic fantasy. It was a bit worse that almost all the characters seemed so shallow as to be almost transparent, but really, how much time can be devoted to fleshing out supporting characters when you’re trying to squeeze a novel in in under 200 pages, eh?

To do a bit of summing-up, I assume I might recommend this novel to anyone either interested in the social science fiction of the 1950s or just curious about the genre. Casual readers might not get all that much out of this, in other words, but overall, I believe the cover blurbs just might have been right about this being one of the best social science fiction novels of the 1950s. (And boy, do I wish I’d been up to thinking of some way of avoiding to use that phrase twice in two sentences.)

6.0/10

(I have to say, though, that I bought this novel primarily because I thought the title to be hilariously camp, and that I had no expectations to it whatsoever. As such, it was quite the pleasant surprise.)