A 1952 sci-fi novel by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth, originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine as a serial entitled Gravy Planet.
In the 22nd Century the world is running out of resources, yet is dominated by powerful advertising agencies promoting excessive consumerism. The protagonist Mitch Courtenay, who works as a copywriter for the Fowler Schocken advertising agency, is a fervent believer in the system until he finds himself the victim of a conspiracy that radically changes his life.
The sequel, The Merchants War, was released in 1984.
Tropes for the novel:
- Advert-Overloaded Future: Advertising so dominates cultural life that the Metropolitan Museum of Art is exhibiting the Maidenform "I Dreamed" ads in its Classics wing. Then again, the narrative of The Space Merchants is largely colored by the perspective of its protagonist, an advertising man who gets sorely disappointed when reading old library books with no ads in them.
- Alien Sky: Jack O'Shea gives a first-hand report on the un-Earthlike environment of Venus:"It's something like the inside of a cave, sort of-only not dark. But the light is-funny. Nobody ever saw light like that on Earth. Orangy-brownish light, brilliant, very brilliant, but sort of threatening in the summer around sunset just before a smasher of a thunderstorm. Only there never is any thunderstorm because there isn't a drop of water around.
- California Collapse: Atomic bomb tests seem to have kicked the San Andreas Fault into overdrive. Southern California has yet to slide into the ocean, but earthquakes happen there daily. Earthquake insurance policies don't cover the territory, but construction companies are always hard at work in replacing buildings that fell down.
- Consolation Backfire: After finding he's been kidnapped and given a fake identity, the protagonist tries to convince everyone of his real identity. A guard demands his Social Security number, and he confidently rattles off eight digits. "You can lose money and health and friendship, but they can't take a low Social Security number away from you," the first-person narrator comments. The guard rolls up his sleeve to see where the number is tattooed and then deals him a Bitch Slap. Taking a look himself, he dumbfoundedly observes that his kidnappers falsified his number by adding thirteen extra digits.
- Death Faked for You: The protagonist collapses unconscious on Starrzelius Glacier and wakes up in the hold of a cargo freighter bound for Costa Rica to find that he has been reassigned the identity of William George Groby, Class B laborer. Even the Social Security number tattooed on the inside of his elbow has been altered. When he protests that he is Mitchell Courtenay, star-class copysmith for Fowler Schocken Associates, the flight lieutenant shows him Courtenay's obituary on the front page of the New York Times.
- Green Aesop: People wear soot-extractor nostril plugs.
- Future Food Is Artificial:
- Only wealthy snobs can afford to eat "new protein" exclusively. For the lower classes, there's a giant, growing, fleshy lump called "Chicken Little" (it was originally a piece of chicken heart tissue) that they carve slices off: the working man's "meat". Better yet, it's fed by hundreds of tubes carrying raw yeast in from a multi-story yeast farm above it, tended by hordes of perpetually abused sweatshop workers.
- There's also a Chlorella plantation; an eighty-foot tower for growing algae.
- Head-in-the-Sand Management: Because the world is dominated by transnational advertising agencies, no-one in government is facing up to Earth's problems (other than trying to colonise Venus and start the same thing there), while the corporate executives are so focused on trying to sell their products and out-compete their rivals that they're not paying attention to how everything around them is falling to pieces.
- Moral Myopia: Courteny and the other advertising men seriously believe what they are doing is for the benefit of all, even though they're draining Earth's resources to supply products that people only want because they've been convinced or even brainwashed into buying them.
- Our Founder: Mitchell Courtenay, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, stands reverently for a few minutes in front of a bust of G. Washington Hill, patron saint of the advertising profession and apostle of the Advert-Overloaded Future.
- Poison and Cure Gambit: Coffiest contains an addictive alkaloid that gets you hooked for life. There's a cure, but it's so expensive it's cheaper to just keep drinking the stuff. Incidentally real-life company Soylent Nutrition
sold Coffiest for a while (presumably non-addictive). - Professional Butt-Kisser: Courtney before his Character Development, as sucking up to the boss is necessary for advancement. At one point the CEO asks Courtney what he thinks of an advertising technique used by their rivals. Courtney is spouting off about how unethical it is when he's informed they're about to do the same, and does a frantic Verbal Backspace until his boss graciously lets him off the hook.
- Retro Rocket: The book has a rocket fitting this description on the cover of the original Ballantine edition. It more or less fits the story's description of the Venus rocket as "the bloated child of the slim V-2's and stubby Moon rockets of the past."
- The Scapegoat: The constant shortages are blamed on "Connie" sabotage rather than anyone admitting the system is breaking down. When Courtenay tries tracking down La Résistance, he finds most of the Connies being arrested are just people set up by the authorities (there is an actual La Résistance, but it's a lot more subtle).
- Subliminal Advertising:
- The book makes a passing reference to "compulsive subsonics" being used in audio ads until that was outlawed, "but we've bounced back with a list of semantic cue words that tie in with every basic trauma and neurosis in American life today."
- In The Merchant's War it's made worse with the introduction of "Campbell areas", where anyone who enters one is subjected to remote limbic system stimulation, creating instant addiction to a particular product. The only cure is being subjected to counter-conditioning — basically associating the product with being tortured; the cure has a significant fatality rate.
- Very False Advertising: Venus is portrayed as a world of "verdant valleys, crystal lakes, brilliant mountain vistas"...In Fowler Schocken advertising artists' impressions of what it might look like after decades of terraforming. In the present, Venus is devoid of water or a breathable atmosphere.
- You Have to Believe Me!: First when Courtenay is trying to convince his employers he's not a sweatshop worker after his identity is altered. Then when he returns to Fowler Schocken and tells his story to the CEO, who just thinks he's cracking up under the stress of his job.
- Zee Rust: The rocket to Venus has to be piloted by a sixty-pound midget to conserve weight, because an automatic pilot "weighed four-and-a-half tons in spite of printed circuits and relays constructed under a microscope".
