C.M. KORNBLUTH

There have been a thousand tales of future Utopias and possible civilizations. They have been ruled by benevolent dictatorships and pure democracies, every form of government from extreme right to absolute left. Unique among these is the easy-going semi-anarchistic society ruled by THE SYNDIC.

Camarades, la consommation nest pas un droit, cest un devoir civique. Ils formaient un joli couple, mais ils ne venaient pas du meme monde. Tu nes pas heureuse ? A cause de... tout ça. Morey, dun geste vague, impliquait les vingt-six pieces de leur demeure, leurs cinq voitures, les neuf robots... Cheri, jai essaye. Je taime, Morey, mais je crois que je deviens folle de vivre ainsi. Jen ai assez detre pauvre ! Heureux les humbles, car ils heriteront de la terre. Heureux Morey, heritier de plus de biens materiels quil nen pourra jamais consommer. LE MOINDRE DES FLEAUX : Et si les autres avaient gagne ? Quand il se reveilla, il se sentait malade et un peu ivre. Il regarda autour de lui. Les indices dun incroyable carnage pullulaient dans toute la demeure. Royland savança en chancelant jusquau charnier, fouillant a pleins bras parmi les ossements entasses. Quelque chose de tranchant, aussi acere quune lame de rasoir, le coupa. Cetait un fragment de sabre long dune quinzaine de centimetres. La courbure de larme ne laissait aucune place au doute : un sabre de samourai. Ainsi, la guerre etait finie...

Camarades, la consommation nest pas un droit, cest un devoir civique. Ils formaient un joli couple, mais ils ne venaient pas du meme monde. Tu nes pas heureuse ? A cause de... tout ça. Morey, dun geste vague, impliquait les vingt-six pieces de leur demeure, leurs cinq voitures, les neuf robots... Cheri, jai essaye. Je taime, Morey, mais je crois que je deviens folle de vivre ainsi. Jen ai assez detre pauvre ! Heureux les humbles, car ils heriteront de la terre. Heureux Morey, heritier de plus de biens materiels quil nen pourra jamais consommer. LE MOINDRE DES FLEAUX : Et si les autres avaient gagne ? Quand il se reveilla, il se sentait malade et un peu ivre. Il regarda autour de lui. Les indices dun incroyable carnage pullulaient dans toute la demeure. Royland savança en chancelant jusquau charnier, fouillant a pleins bras parmi les ossements entasses. Quelque chose de tranchant, aussi acere quune lame de rasoir, le coupa. Cetait un fragment de sabre long dune quinzaine de centimetres. La courbure de larme ne laissait aucune place au doute : un sabre de samourai. Ainsi, la guerre etait finie...

Published more than 60 years ago, this dark and prescient story of a future devolved to idiocy remains one of the most frightening visions to have emerged from the science fiction of that decade. Envisioning a future United States overwhelmed by a citizenry of low IQ (a consequence of the overbreeding of the stupid) Kornbluth was in fact writing of an observed present. The steady, inexorable descent of human intelligence obsessed Kornbluth, was one of his major themes and reached its truest statement in this novelette. The secret masters of Kornbluths future are a small population of the intelligent who in subterranean fashion run the country but the "marching morons overwhelm them and they summon a cynical entrepreneur from the past to help them deal with the dilemma. Weak on technology (a time machine is employed scoop the entrepreneur into their present) the novelette is deadly accurate in its portrait of a society sunk in stupid television, ornate, worthless automobiles and catchphrases which substitute for thought. The denouement is absolutely uncompromising and its utter bleakness is refractory not of a speculative future (which it may well be) but a present which Kornbluth found omnipresent and unbearable. In terms of social statement and extrapolation THE MARCHING MORONS stands with Orwells 1984 or Forsters THE MACHINE STOPS as shattering anatomization of an inevitable future.

There have been a thousand tales of future Utopias and possible civilizations. They have been ruled by benevolent dictatorships and pure democracies, every form of government from extreme right to absolute left. Unique among these is the easy-going semi-anarchistic society ruled by THE SYNDIC.

The colony on the red planet had no need for heroes. It wanted people who knew how to solve the problem of simple survival. More than anything else it wanted independence form a doomed Earthand it was in deadly danger of succeeding. A gripping tale of adventure, survival, and defiance set on a future Mars.

The colony on the red planet had no need for heroes. It wanted people who knew how to solve the problem of simple survival. More than anything else it wanted independence form a doomed Earthand it was in deadly danger of succeeding.A gripping tale of adventure, survival, and defiance set on a future Mars.

About all of Halseys Planet there was the imperceptible reek of decay. The clean, big, bustling, efficient spaceport only made the sensation stronger. From where he stood on the height of the Ramp, he could see the Yards, the spires of Halsey City ten kilometers away - and the tumble-down gray acres of Ghost Town between.

"Podría ser llamada la mejor novela de ciencia ficción...", Kingsley Amis"Una utopía donde el sistema económico ha devorado al sistema político, donde las grandes compañías ejercen el poder, sin intermediarios, y hasta el fin... y la sociedad ha sido estratificada rigidamente en productores, ejecutivos y consumidores... No es meramente un mundo donde el hombre de la publicidad es el rey; combina ademas el lujo y la escasez, aparatos fantasticos junto a la falta de combustible, toda clase de bebidas y gomas de mascar, y una extrema escasez de proteinas", Kingsley Amis.

Uno de los clásicos imprescindibles del catálogo de Minotauro, ahora en nuestra biblioteca Minotauro EsencialesMitchell Courtenay, el mejor publicista de la Sociedad Schoken, es el encargado de elaborar la campaña publicitaria para el Proyecto Venus. Pero, tras una sucia maniobra de sus competidores, se vera relegado a los mas bajos niveles de la sociedad, desde donde debera ascender de nuevo para recuperar la posicion que le ha sido arrebatada. Durante el duro viaje, establecera contacto con los consistas, una faccion rebelde de anticonsumistas acusados de terrorismo y de sabotaje.