Moral hazard: Preferred Risk (1955) by Frederik Pohl and Lester del Rey [Review]

Two collaborators imagine a world dominated by a monolithic insurance company, and threatened by tyranny and nuclear terrorism.

Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth formed a key collaboration in 1950s American science fiction. Their string of novels written together, beginning with The Space Merchants (1952), helped to establish the tradition of satirical, social SF in that decade. 

Preferred Risk is a direct successor to those landmark collaborations, with Lester del Rey filling in for Kornbluth. It is a clever variation on the template established by The Space Merchants, depicting a world dominated by a single, nearly all-powerful insurance company. It is a lesser novel, but an interesting one in its own right. 

Over the years, though, the content of Preferred Risk has been overshadowed by the strange and unedifying story of its creation. That is because this novel was the winner of a sham contest, and was originally credited to a made-up scientist.

The Pohl-Kornbluth novels were serialised in Galaxy magazine, at that time edited by H.L. Gold. In 1953, the magazine announced a novel-writing contest, in collaboration with the publisher Simon & Schuster. Gold was inundated with entries, but the standard was poor. As Pohl said in 1977:

“Horace Gold was extremely hard-up for a winning novel. He had a large number of selections. He had an apartment on East 14th Street [in New York City] and one room of it was wall-to-wall cardboard boxes containing novels. I helped Horace by reading manuscripts for him from time to time, and I read quite a few of them, so I know the ones I read were awful.”

Faced with this situation, Gold suggested to Pohl and Kornbluth that their second major collaboration, Gladiator-at-Law (1955) be entered as a surefire winner - albeit under a pseudonym. They refused.

Separately, Pohl collaborated with another writer, Lester del Rey, on a novelette also intended for publication in Galaxy. What Pohl and Kornbluth would not do, Pohl and del Rey were happy to do. They expanded the story to novel length, and it was declared the contest winner. Credited to an invented nuclear physicist, “Edson McCann”, the novel was serialised over four issues between June and September 1955. Pohl and Kornbluth banked the $6,500 prize. Preferred Risk, then, began life as a sham contest winner.

The novel was cover-featured on the June 1955 issue of Galaxy. The interior illustration by Sanford Kossin depict Zorchi hurling himself in front of a train

While this fact does cast something of a pall over the book, and while it is not as strong as Pohl’s work with Kornbluth, Preferred Risk is an entertaining work of social SF. It is perhaps most interesting when compared with The Space Merchants and Gladiator-at-Law, with which it shares a number of features, but from which it also deviates. In the two earlier novels, the world was dominated by advertising agencies and corporate lawyers, respectively. Here, it is a single insurance firm - known only as the Company - that rules.

Tom Willis is a claims adjuster who views the Company with an almost religious awe. He credits it with ridding the world of war, crime, and want and is blind to any evidence to the contrary. The Company insures against all of these evils, which is to say that those in good standing with the Company receive the food, healthcare, shelter, security, and travel that their policy affords them. As far as Willis is concerned, those at the bottom of society - “uninsurables” - deserve that lowly status.

Willis was not always so loyal, however, and due to a past indiscretion - he briefly blamed the Company for the death of his wife - he is lucky to be promoted and sent to Naples, Italy. There, he is made to investigate two apparently separate crises facing the company. 

The first is Zorchi, an eccentric man who exploits his incredible regenerative abilities to extract a living from the Company. He deliberately harms himself, makes a successful claim on his policy, heals rapidly, and then repeats the process. The second is a rebel group threatening to rise up against Company rule - an unthinkable challenge to the status quo. Inevitably, Willis not only becomes tangled up with this group, but also learns of a link with Zorchi. And what of the formidable “clinics”, equipped to put perhaps the whole of humankind into suspended animation?

Preferred Risk hews quite closely to the formula set up in The Space Merchants. Willis is the standard Pohl-Kornbluth protagonist, a white-collar professional whose faith in the system is challenged just as he nears a personal triumph. There is the alluring woman who catalyses that challenge, the shadowy agents of the system, and the satirical focus on unchecked corporate power. 

Some elements separate the novel, however. The Italian setting is quite unique, and draws on Pohl’s experiences during World War II. The irascible, pompous character of Zorchi is distinctive, as are his bizarre mutations. The book is also interesting in its extrapolation of 1950s fears - here, Europe is heavily balkanized, with microstates occasionally resorting to limited nuclear warfare. Only the United States remains whole, preserved as the seat of Company power. 

The absence of Kornbluth is felt in the novel’s lessened cynicism, and the presence of del Rey is perhaps reflected in its greater emphasis on action. Late in the story, there is a major battle in the shadow of Roman ruins, something with no equivalent in a book like Gladiator-at-Law.

Those who enjoy the Pohl-Kornbluth collaborations would do well to seek out the lesser known successor that is Preferred Risk. It is a worthy variation on similar themes, and a book which deserved better than to be declared the winner of a phoney contest. It is another minor classic of 1950s social SF, co-written by a pioneer of that form.

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• Lester del Rey sometimes claimed that his full name was Ramon Felipe San Juan Mario Silvio Enrico Smith Heartcourt-Brace Sierra y Alvarez del Rey y de los Verdes. In fact, he was born Leonard Knapp.
  
• In 1977, Lester del Rey and his wife Judy-Lynn del Rey became the editors of the Del Rey publishing imprint, which became a major force in US SF publishing.
  
• I read the 1980 edition of Preferred Risk published by Del Rey; it contains two afterwards, one written by each author. They explain that while the writing of the novel was creatively torturous, it helped cement a long friendship.