SF’s greatest partnership? Three novels by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth (1952 - 1959)4/25/2024 
The Futurians were likely the most famous and important fan group in the history of science fiction. Based in New York City in the 1930s and 1940s, they included SF fans who went on to become successful writers, artists, editors, and agents in the field. Some of the most important writers in the group included Isaac Asimov, James Blish, and two men who formed possibly the most important collaboration in science fiction.
That partnership was between Frederik Pohl (1919 - 2013) and Cyril M. Kornbluth (1923 - 1958). They worked together from 1940 until the latter’s untimely death at the age of just 34. In that time, they collaborated on several short stories and four science fiction novels, of which three are considered classics. These are The Space Merchants (1952), Gladiator-at-Law (1955), and Wolfbane (1959). This special feature takes a brisk tour through these books, each a classic 1950s SF in its own right which add up to a memorable body of work. 
The first part of The Space Merchants in Galaxy, illustrated by Don Sibley
Everything must go: The Space Merchants (1952)
The Space Merchants is easily one of the most important, successful, and acclaimed SF novels of the 1950s. Groff Conklin called it “perhaps the best science fiction satire since Brave New World”. In 1960, Kingsley Amis wrote that it had “many claims to being the best science-fiction novel so far”. In 2006, Stephen E. Andrews and Nick Rennison called it a “classic” which “had a huge impact on determining the possibilities for 1950s social SF”. The Space Merchants was originally published over three issues of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine, then edited by H.L. Gold, in the summer of 1952. In May of the following year, it was released in book form by Ballantine Books, helping to establish that company as a significant player in the emerging market for SF novels. By 1978 it had sold ten million copies in 25 languages. In the future, the United States is dominated by corporate interests. Even members of Congress are little more than spokespeople for major companies. The real power players are the advertising agencies which manipulate markets, public opinion, and even the American space programme. The puppet government is compelled to colonise Venus, and ad agency Shocken Associates is given a challenging task - to market the forbidding hellhole as a heroic destination for plucky volunteers to conquer. Leading this effort is “star class” copywriter Mitch Courtenay, who lives a fairly charmed life in New York. He assembles a team and sets about his slickest deception yet. But what begins as a career-making opportunity rapidly devolves into a disaster. During a trip to Antarctica to confront a rival, Courtenay is rendered unconscious, has his identity stolen, and is cast out of his privileged life to toil as just another ordinary working stiff in the brutalised global underclass. The Space Merchants takes some clear inspiration from earlier books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was published just a few years earlier. Compared to Orwell, though, Pohl and Kornbluth are having much more fun. Their first collaborative novel is a fast-paced, slick satire which merges an exciting plot with clever extrapolations of 1950s concerns into a future setting. In a number of ways, the book feels ahead of its time. For example, Courtenay falls in with subversive conservationists or “consies”, who decry the way capitalism is despoiling the natural world. This was a decade before Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, which first solidified an environmental movement in the United States. An environmental theme is a strikingly rare element in a 1950s SF novel. The Space Merchants also depicts a New York City reliant on cycle rickshaws, in use due to a shortage of fuel. As outlandish as the book can be, it also has the ring of truth to it - this comes from both Pohl’s experience as a copywriter on New York’s Madison Avenue in the late 1940s, and Kornbluth’s days as a journalist. Even today, the acclaim for The Space Merchants seems apt. It is a very cleverly constructed, pacy story with new details and sources of interest on every page. Pohl and Kornbluth clearly already had an effective partnership. In his landmark book Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels (1985), David Pringle suggested that the novel is a “bit too slick and self-satisfied in its own wit”, but also felt that “no other writer has surpassed Pohl and Kornbluth’s achievements in this vein”. 
The first part of Gladiator-at-Law in Galaxy, illustrated by Ed Emshwiller
Boardroom as battlefield: Gladiator-at-Law (1955)
The second major SF novel by Pohl and Kornbluth had a very similar publication history. Like The Space Merchants, it was also serialised over three issues of Galaxy - this time in the summer of 1954 - and it was published in book form by Ballantine. The similarities go on: Gladiator-at-Law is another social SF satire, set in a corporate-dominated future America. However, what begins in a familiar vein gradually takes on a unique feel of its own. In this vision of the United States, the pre-eminence of commercial and financial power means that corporate lawyers are some of society’s most prominent figures. Charles Mundin is no such high-flyer, but merely a lowly criminal lawyer, which is much less prestigious. He is struggling, to the extent that he can barely keep up the monthly payments on his “Sleepless Secretary”, a kind of barely intelligent proto-answering machine. For this reason, Mundin takes on a risky long shot - a corporate law case he is not really qualified for, but could be his route into the big leagues. He is tasked with pursuing the claim of the Lavin family, who own 25% of the stock in GML, an immensely valuable house building corporation. The issue is that young Don Lavin has been “conditioned”, subjected to neurosurgery which prevents him from recalling the location of his stock certificates. If Mundin can help recover them, he could help mount a corporate coup that could rock American capitalism to his foundations. The title of Gladiator-at-Law suggests that Mundin will be forced to physically fight in order to succeed. There are bloody gladiatorial struggles in the story, used to keep the masses happy and referred to as “Field Days”, but they are a minor element. The real struggle is in the boardrooms of Monmouth City, New Jersey, which has become the nation’s financial capital since New York City was turned into a bombed-out ruin. Gladiator-at-Law is as much a legal drama as it is an SF novel, and its plot is driven by action in the boardrooms, which become battlefields in their own right. Pohl and Kornbluth make a number of fascinating extrapolations, especially on the topic of housing. GML Homes secured its dominance by building “bubble homes”, which evoke the “machines for living in” espoused by the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier. These houses are programmable and protean, able to change decor and layout to suit their residents’ moods. They are also a powerful form of social control, accessible only to those on an employment contract with a big corporation. Those kicked out of their bubble homes are condemned to live - or at least survive - in “Belly Rave”, a dystopian suburban sprawl at the city’s edge. The area began as a model community, but rapidly degenerated into a violent, gang-ridden, hopeless slum. Belly Rave was inspired by the real-life Levittown, New York, where Kornbluth himself lived. The town was made up of mass-produced, racially-segregated homes built for returning servicemen after World War II by Levitt & Sons, Inc. David Pringle wrote that Gladiator-at-Law “comes close” to the quality of The Space Merchants, but that it “rests a notch further down the scale”. Arguably, though, it is even better in some respects. This is another beautifully constructed satire, which extrapolates intriguingly on several aspects of life in America in the 1950s. It has a number of memorable sequences, such as Mundin’s struggle to acquire a single share of GML stock, his encounter with the horror of Belly Rave, and the discovery of who really controls the shadowy financiers Green, Charleston - of whom even the city’s biggest tycoons are afraid. 
The first part of Wolfbane in Galaxy, illustrated by Wally Wood
A stolen Earth: Wolfbane (1959)
The final collaboration between Pohl and Kornbluth also began life in Galaxy; this time as a two-part serial in October and November 1957. However, it was altered greatly prior to its publication in book form by Ballantine in September 1959. Kornbluth was tasked with extending the text from 40,000 to 60,000 words. Wolfbane differs greatly from its predecessors. While The Space Merchants and Gladiator-at-Law are both social, satirical SF novels with strong similarities, this final collaboration strikes out in a radically different and altogether stranger direction. It is a much more imaginative, cerebral, and in some ways unsettling story. When the novel opens, it has been 250 years since the Earth was essentially stolen - removed by aliens from our solar system and cast out into interstellar space. Alien machines, known only as Pyramids, have turned the moon into a makeshift sun and reignite it roughly every five years. In Earth’s parlous state, the human population has collapsed and the survivors eke out a meagre living in the weak light of their “sunlet”. Clearly this unique setting is a stark departure from Pohl and Kornbluth’s earlier books. The opening chapters of Wolfbane are set in Wheeling, West Virginia where society is bound by rigid rules, prescribed gestures, and enforced conformity. This culture has emerged in part due to the desperate shortage of food, which has refocused life on the bare necessities and has all but destroyed individuality and creative expression. Glenn Tropile represents a classic SF trope - the unruly outsider whose aberrant behaviour is a catalyst for change. That he displays any capacity for pursuit of personal advantage marks him out as a “Son of the Wolf”, and has him condemned to execution by the extraction of his cerebrospinal fluid. Inevitably Tropile escapes, and makes contact with a community of other “Wolves”. They conscript him into a possible suicide mission to Everest, where a single Pyramid perches at the Earth’s highest point. Before this can occur, Tropile finds himself experiencing a very different kind of close encounter with the alien machines; one which could free humanity from bondage, but possibly at a terrible cost. It is during its second half that Wolfbane truly comes into its own. It is important, though, to leave the story’s revelations to the reader. However in general terms, the novel gradually becomes a fascinating exploration of the relationship between man and machine, and the contrast between individual and collective intelligence and experience. Wolfbane often feels ahead of its time, and it anticipates a number of later SF stories. For example, certain elements of it have striking connections with The Matrix (1999). Indeed, the Science Fiction Encyclopedia (SFE) suggests that the novel “is a precursor to some of the most ambitious work of authors like Stephen Baxter and Greg Bear”. Far darker and more ominous than the earlier collaborations, Wolfbane arguably deserves more attention than it has received so far.
Sadly, Kornbluth did not live to see the publication of Wolfbane in book form. He died of a heart attack in March 1958, aged just 34, which Pohl suggested was a result of damage to his heart sustained during his service during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Pohl worked diligently to sustain and expand his friend’s legacy, and won a Hugo Award in 1973 for the short story “The Meeting”, which was based on an idea originally from Kornbluth.
While Kornbluth’s career was sadly short, Pohl’s was extraordinarily long and he was involved with SF for over 70 years. As the SFE puts it, “he took until the mid 1970s to write novels as effective as the joint efforts” with his old writing partner. The peak of his career was perhaps his tremendous success with Gateway (1977). It was a major, late breakthrough for someone who had by then been known mainly as a magazine editor and agent for many years. Today, The Space Merchants, Gladiator-at-Law, and Wolfbane all stand up impressively well even after over six decades. This unique partnership has a strong claim to be the greatest in all of science fiction, sadly brief as it was.
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