The Merchants' War

Pohl's satirical predecessor, Space Merchants, was written in the 50s but lost its momentum halfway through and unraveled into an incoherent ending. Fast forward 30 years and Pohl writes a sequel named Merchants War, which didn't let me down as its predecessor did. Merchants War is chalked full of wonderful satire, the same way in which Space Merchant's started but never finished. The satirical momentum never lets up and includes political, religious, advertisement, cultural and military satire wrapped up in a cozy sci-fi blanket. These satirical jabs are delightful the whole way through. The plot is progressive and the happenings are whimsical. This pace of plot is rarely seen in modern sci-fi and seems to fit perfectly for this type of novel. Pohl has a wicked sense of humor and is at times a sadist when involving his characters in crazy schemes or just laying on the perpetual hardships for Tennison. You can easily manage a sympathetic smile for such a kicked-when-down character. Below Tennison, there are even more characters which can be recognized through the general satire - everyone has a tyrannical boss, or a gopher assistant, or a manically possessive roommate, or an obese addict for a friend, or a unicycling presidential hopeful. What? Pohl's continual quirky wit, colorful imagination and bold/cold stabs at all things satirical provide a one-of-a-kind novel which is now prized on my sci-fi bookshelf among his other great novels like Gateway, Man-Plus and Starburst.

In this book, Frederik Pohl takes us back to his dystopian future, where unrestrained growth has ruined the Earth, and produced a two-tiered world with an ad-company elite, and a huge underclass of "consumers." It is many years after the events of The Space Merchants, and ad-man Tennison Tarb is ready to return to Earth from an agonizing stay on the weird dystopia built by the conservationists on Venus. But, the world has changed since Tarb left, and he does not know all of the new rules. It's a weird future that Tarb has to survive in, especially if he is going to make a difference. This book was written some thirty years after The Space Merchants, and has a rather different feel to it. But, that said, I did find it to be a very interesting read. If you read and enjoyed The Space Merchants, then you really should read The Merchants' War!

THE MERCHANTS' WAR (1984) is the hilarious sequal to the classic THE SPACE MERCHANTS (1952). While THE SPACE MERCHANTS is the better known of these two books, THE MERCHANTS' WAR stands up better to the passing of years, as most of the bold predictions in THE SPACE MERCHANTS don't hold up well over time. The story takes up about 30 years after where THE SPACE MERCHANTS left off, with the "Conservationists" having gotten a foothold on colonizing Venus, and with Earth even more over-populated (40Bln people), and more over-commercialized. Well, what really impressed me about THE MERCHANTS' WAR was the situations that the befuddled main character Tennison Tarb gets himself into... at first, I thought that "Tenny" was just another unlikeable main character - for example, when he and his girlfriend are out exploring the old Russina Venera landing site on Venus, "Tenny" gets bored, and lets air out of his oxygen tanks, so that the two must head back inside... but later, the situations that continue to happen to Tenny start to get you laughing at him... Tenny reminds me of this Program Manager at my work, and I could imagine these things happening to him, and I just started to laugh at loud, and on a number of occasions. One of the things that happens to Tenny, is that he quickly becomes driven to buy and be addicted to "Mokie-Coke"... I don't want to spoil it for anybody - so I'll just tell you, you've got the find and read this book (I had to get it at a remote branch of the San Diego Library system).

Really brilliant work. Very captivating , ease to read book. It combines all the best in sci-fi.

Although it's not as well known as some of his other work this is Pohl at his best! Take the worst trends of society right now and that's where this book starts. This is the sequel to Space Merchants and in some ways it's a redrafting of that story. Excellent.