The Space Merchants

'''Pohl, Frederik, and C. M. Kornbluth. The Space Merchants.''' New York: Ballantine, [1953]. "A condensed version of this novel appeared in GALAXY magazine under the title Gravy Planet" (June, July, August 1952).

One of the great satires on human greed, pride, and stupidity generally, and capitalist consumption and advertising more particularly. In the reading by J. P. Brennan, SM has at its heart the image of "Chicken Little," an organic thing with mechanism literally superimposed upon it (and a way into it)—an image that works well in an attack on "the text's mechanistic psychology" (see under Literary Criticism, Brennan's "The Mechanical Chicken," here 107-8).