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Preferred Risk
PREFERRED RISK first appeared in 1955. It won the Galaxy Magazine / Simon & Schuster contest for 1955's best work of science fiction.
The Company, a powerful, efficient, and thoroughly monstrous insurance organization, controlled the entire world. It scientifically regulating every aspect of life: war, epidemics, one-a-day food pills and test-tube sex...all through the use of its patented, terrifying human deep-freeze vault. Claims Adjuster Wills, a great believer in the Company, has second thoughts when he meets beautiful Rena, whose radical father lies frozen in one of the Company's subterranean vaults...
114 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1955
About the author
Lester del Rey
636 books119 followersLester del Rey was an American science fiction author and editor. Del Rey is especially famous for his juvenile novels such as those which are part of the Winston Science Fiction series, and for Del Rey Books, the fantasy and science fiction branch of Ballantine Books edited by Lester del Rey and his fourth wife Judy-Lynn del Rey.
Also published as:
Philip St. John
Eric van Lihn
Erik van Lhin
Kenneth Wright
Edson McCann (with Frederik Pohl)
Also published as:
Philip St. John
Eric van Lihn
Erik van Lhin
Kenneth Wright
Edson McCann (with Frederik Pohl)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
April 7, 2021
Preferred Risk is a far-fetched and unlikely novel of the if-this-goes-on flavor in which an insurance company has taken over the governance and finance of the world. It was written by two grand old masters of the field, Frederik Pohl and Lester del Rey, under the pseudonym of Edson McCann. It's set in Italy (where I believe Pohl was stationed during World War II) in the not too distant future, after a "limited" nuclear war. It does have some humorous moments, and considerable social satire. It's not the best of either Pohl or del Rey, but I enjoyed reading it when it was published under the collaborators real names in 1980, and I enjoyed revisiting it with this fine Librivox reading. The paperback edition includes afterwords by both authors than give some interesting insight into the book. H.L. Gold at Galaxy Magazine had sponsored a contest for a new science fiction novel but did not get any suitable entries, so commissioned this one to be the winner. The pseudonym came about as a sly nod to Einstein's famous equation: E M C C. Both talk about disagreeing over the way the story should be told, and playing cards and watching the McCarthy hearings on television between writing. It's altogether good old stuff, an unusual footnote in the history of the genre.
January 15, 2023
I recognize Pohl’s style here, the idea of an insurance company as world government system is unique and it being set in Italy - where Pohl was stationed during WW2 and also used for his final novel, “All the Lives he Led”. I haven’t read enough del Ray to comment on his contribution, however, this collaboration did manage to rate as ‘light entertainment’ so was a worthwhile read - I have a paperback copy but this can be found in the public domain. I speculate that this might have something to do with the fact that this was entered, and was declared winner, in a Galaxy magazine writing contest... apparently, there being no publishable entries the editor had no other choice but to award this in the place of amateur submissions.
October 23, 2022
What if the world were run by an insurance company, and everything were in terms of 'policies' and 'claims'?
Well, that's an idea. McCann--del Rey and Pohl, rather--glides over the surface nonsense of providing risk management coverage for things like 'food' but eventually dive into the nut of it, which is that insurance is risk-averse and that leads to social and technological stagnation, and that the Company is motivated to allow small losses in order to guarantee that premiums are paid up.
The trappings are all here, from subtly oppressive governance to scrappy resistance and love interest, and for an industry as boring as actuarial tables it does eventually get around to threatening atomic apocalypse.
Well, that's an idea. McCann--del Rey and Pohl, rather--glides over the surface nonsense of providing risk management coverage for things like 'food' but eventually dive into the nut of it, which is that insurance is risk-averse and that leads to social and technological stagnation, and that the Company is motivated to allow small losses in order to guarantee that premiums are paid up.
The trappings are all here, from subtly oppressive governance to scrappy resistance and love interest, and for an industry as boring as actuarial tables it does eventually get around to threatening atomic apocalypse.
April 12, 2020
Preferred Risk was originally published in 1955 as a four-part serialized novel in the magazine Galaxy Science Fiction. The author's name was given as Edson McCann. I am going to quote from my earlier review of the June, 1955 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction:
This novel became well known in the science fiction world, not because it was so good but because it won a prize offered by Galaxy and the publishing company Simon and Schuster. And because it was later revealed that this had been something of a hoax. The following material is excerpted from a post on the website
https://io9.gizmodo.com/
Michael Ashley explains what happened, in his book Transformations: The Story of the Science Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970:
Horace Gold was in the middle of judging a $6,500 prize competition for the best new science-fiction novel, co-sponsored by Galaxy and Simon & Schuster. The competition had been announced in the March 1953 issue of Galaxy and the deadline for submissions was 15 October. The novels Gold was receiving were generally poor and he asked [Frederik] Pohl if he could treat Gladiator at Law as an entry if he and [co-author C.M.] Kornbluth were prepared to submit it under a pseudonym. Pohl did not think this was playing fair and declined. However, soon after completing Gladiator at Law Pohl began a new novel, Preferred Risk, this time with Lester del Rey. Here the huge corporations of the future were the insurance companies, which had refined every action and consequence down to a scale of probabilities and actuarial tables. By now the plot variations were becoming a little staid, and this novel is not a patch on the previous two. Nevertheless, Gold liked it—or certainly preferred it to the submissions he had received. He persuaded Pohl and del Rey to allow Preferred Risk to be entered under a pseudonym and it was duly declared the winner. The novel, attributed to Edson McCann, ran in the June to September issues of Galaxy.
I had read parts of the book before and have finally read the entire story, not in any of the many formats listed on Goodreads (although I do have a copy of the 1962 Dell paperback); I read an online copy on www.gutenberg.org which evidently was taken directly from the Galaxy serial. I believe that science fiction novels originally published in magazines were often revised, in some cases substantially so, when they were published as books, so what I read may differ from later versions.
I agree with Mike Ashley that this is not as good as Pohl's two earlier collaborations with C. M. Kornbluth, The Space Merchants and Gladiator at Law. Part of the difference is that the sinister entities controlling the world in those two novels, the advertising industry and a combination of corporate law and the housing industry, seem more plausible threats than insurance companies.
Also, Thomas Wills, the main character, frequently seems incredibly naive. He is brave and he manages to help save the world, but he is stumbling all the way. The heroes of The Space Merchants and Gladiator at Law are clever; Wills is lucky.
The best thing in Preferred Risk is one character, Luigi Zorchi. Zorchi is a man whose body has a strange ability to heal; he can lose limbs, eyes, or other body parts and they regenerate. His appendix has been removed repeatedly; new ones always grow. He is in constant pain as boils erupt on him. Zorchi has realized that he can make money from this; the Company, the insurance company that runs the world, pays off for injuries. Each time Zorchi loses a body part, he gets paid. He is angry, bitter, proud, and shrewd. He turns out to have abilities that even he did not anticipate.
Preferred Risk might not have deserved to be a prize winner; it is not really a good book. It is, however, a reasonably entertaining one.
This novel became well known in the science fiction world, not because it was so good but because it won a prize offered by Galaxy and the publishing company Simon and Schuster. And because it was later revealed that this had been something of a hoax. The following material is excerpted from a post on the website
https://io9.gizmodo.com/
Michael Ashley explains what happened, in his book Transformations: The Story of the Science Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970:
Horace Gold was in the middle of judging a $6,500 prize competition for the best new science-fiction novel, co-sponsored by Galaxy and Simon & Schuster. The competition had been announced in the March 1953 issue of Galaxy and the deadline for submissions was 15 October. The novels Gold was receiving were generally poor and he asked [Frederik] Pohl if he could treat Gladiator at Law as an entry if he and [co-author C.M.] Kornbluth were prepared to submit it under a pseudonym. Pohl did not think this was playing fair and declined. However, soon after completing Gladiator at Law Pohl began a new novel, Preferred Risk, this time with Lester del Rey. Here the huge corporations of the future were the insurance companies, which had refined every action and consequence down to a scale of probabilities and actuarial tables. By now the plot variations were becoming a little staid, and this novel is not a patch on the previous two. Nevertheless, Gold liked it—or certainly preferred it to the submissions he had received. He persuaded Pohl and del Rey to allow Preferred Risk to be entered under a pseudonym and it was duly declared the winner. The novel, attributed to Edson McCann, ran in the June to September issues of Galaxy.
I had read parts of the book before and have finally read the entire story, not in any of the many formats listed on Goodreads (although I do have a copy of the 1962 Dell paperback); I read an online copy on www.gutenberg.org which evidently was taken directly from the Galaxy serial. I believe that science fiction novels originally published in magazines were often revised, in some cases substantially so, when they were published as books, so what I read may differ from later versions.
I agree with Mike Ashley that this is not as good as Pohl's two earlier collaborations with C. M. Kornbluth, The Space Merchants and Gladiator at Law. Part of the difference is that the sinister entities controlling the world in those two novels, the advertising industry and a combination of corporate law and the housing industry, seem more plausible threats than insurance companies.
Also, Thomas Wills, the main character, frequently seems incredibly naive. He is brave and he manages to help save the world, but he is stumbling all the way. The heroes of The Space Merchants and Gladiator at Law are clever; Wills is lucky.
The best thing in Preferred Risk is one character, Luigi Zorchi. Zorchi is a man whose body has a strange ability to heal; he can lose limbs, eyes, or other body parts and they regenerate. His appendix has been removed repeatedly; new ones always grow. He is in constant pain as boils erupt on him. Zorchi has realized that he can make money from this; the Company, the insurance company that runs the world, pays off for injuries. Each time Zorchi loses a body part, he gets paid. He is angry, bitter, proud, and shrewd. He turns out to have abilities that even he did not anticipate.
Preferred Risk might not have deserved to be a prize winner; it is not really a good book. It is, however, a reasonably entertaining one.
July 12, 2019
Možno by to malo byť skôr 1-1.5 hviezdičky, ale mám k týmto pulpovým sci-fi pozitívny vzťah, tak jednu pridávam ad-hoc (a asi neprávom). Edit:po napísaní recenzie som zmenil na jednu.
v skratke - príliš dlhé, zmätočné a postavené na silne iracionálnych pohľadoch na svet.
Poistná spoločnosť prakticky ovláda svet a vďaka nej sa majú všetci lepšie (možno?) - choroby miznú, vojen je málo a sú značne obmedzené v rozsahu a hlavne stratách a spoločnosť robí všetko pre dobro všetkých.
Hlavný dôvod prečo som to dopočúval bol pravdepodobne masochizmus a fakt že som v telefóne už nič iné nemal...
Sú tam záblesky zaujímavých myšlienok (2-3), ale vyžadujú poctivé hľadanie hodné Poirota druhý deň potom, ako sa náhodou ubytoval v malom dedinskom hotelíku spolu s väčším množstvom neznámych ľudí...
v skratke - príliš dlhé, zmätočné a postavené na silne iracionálnych pohľadoch na svet.
Poistná spoločnosť prakticky ovláda svet a vďaka nej sa majú všetci lepšie (možno?) - choroby miznú, vojen je málo a sú značne obmedzené v rozsahu a hlavne stratách a spoločnosť robí všetko pre dobro všetkých.
Hlavný dôvod prečo som to dopočúval bol pravdepodobne masochizmus a fakt že som v telefóne už nič iné nemal...
Sú tam záblesky zaujímavých myšlienok (2-3), ale vyžadujú poctivé hľadanie hodné Poirota druhý deň potom, ako sa náhodou ubytoval v malom dedinskom hotelíku spolu s väčším množstvom neznámych ľudí...
October 20, 2023
On the one hand, I had low expectations for an obscure sci-fi novel written in 1955, considering how badly much of the genre's literature from that era has dated. On the other hand, I found a sci-fi book about an insurance claims adjuster to be intriguing because the most provocative works sometimes have the most unusual premises. In this particular case, I was pleasantly surprised, and while this collaborative novel fell well short of being a masterpiece, I found it an engaging and worthy short read.
The authors trade in a subtle dystopianism. The reader is set on edge at the top of the book, but the hard evidence that the world in which the action unfolds is, perhaps, not quite ideal seeps in slowly. The protagonist is a typical mid-1950s savior: despite being a mere insurance adjuster, he seems to naturally possess the skills and derring-do that will inevitably save the day, not to mention win the girl. But despite such cliches, the specifics of the story are well enough wrought to leave the reader merely chuckling at the ham-fisted characterizations. In short, we want to unravel the central mystery and see how it's resolved.
As to the former, the unraveling of the mystery, the authors keep us on the edge of our seats, with enough twists and turns to keep the pages turning. The resolution of the story, however, falls just a bit flat. Written during the build-up of the Cold War and the height of the House Un-American Activities Committee, the finale amounts to a generous slice of pro-American, pro-capitalist propaganda. Yet, despite what might otherwise be glaring and fatal flaws, somehow this novel still seems to work. I can only attribute this, again, to its unique premise, a central element that prevents the novel from falling into abject triteness and—at least for this reader—maintains interest. The slim length, the tight pacing, and the lack of filler all contribute to a fun, if not deep, read.
(Note: I've rounded up to four stars, although this book more properly hovers around the three-and-a-half mark.)
The authors trade in a subtle dystopianism. The reader is set on edge at the top of the book, but the hard evidence that the world in which the action unfolds is, perhaps, not quite ideal seeps in slowly. The protagonist is a typical mid-1950s savior: despite being a mere insurance adjuster, he seems to naturally possess the skills and derring-do that will inevitably save the day, not to mention win the girl. But despite such cliches, the specifics of the story are well enough wrought to leave the reader merely chuckling at the ham-fisted characterizations. In short, we want to unravel the central mystery and see how it's resolved.
As to the former, the unraveling of the mystery, the authors keep us on the edge of our seats, with enough twists and turns to keep the pages turning. The resolution of the story, however, falls just a bit flat. Written during the build-up of the Cold War and the height of the House Un-American Activities Committee, the finale amounts to a generous slice of pro-American, pro-capitalist propaganda. Yet, despite what might otherwise be glaring and fatal flaws, somehow this novel still seems to work. I can only attribute this, again, to its unique premise, a central element that prevents the novel from falling into abject triteness and—at least for this reader—maintains interest. The slim length, the tight pacing, and the lack of filler all contribute to a fun, if not deep, read.
(Note: I've rounded up to four stars, although this book more properly hovers around the three-and-a-half mark.)
July 3, 2022
3.0 stars - I liked it, but I don't think I'm likely to read this again.
Preferred Risk has perhaps the oddest future assumptions I've seen. That's it's strength. It's written from a perspective of nuclear war being less than catastrophic, and when a catatonic state can suppress medical problems and let radiation run its course without causing long term affects, as long as you don't mind "sleeping off" the decades of radioactive decay. And an insurance company manages the world to insure peach. What could go wrong when such power is concentrated?
Technically and socially, it's a bit dated. The cloak-and-dagger action scenes are a little interesting, but not spectacular. But it is thought provoking.
Preferred Risk has perhaps the oddest future assumptions I've seen. That's it's strength. It's written from a perspective of nuclear war being less than catastrophic, and when a catatonic state can suppress medical problems and let radiation run its course without causing long term affects, as long as you don't mind "sleeping off" the decades of radioactive decay. And an insurance company manages the world to insure peach. What could go wrong when such power is concentrated?
Technically and socially, it's a bit dated. The cloak-and-dagger action scenes are a little interesting, but not spectacular. But it is thought provoking.
March 4, 2022
review of
Edson McCann's Preferred Risk
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 28-March 4, 2022
As a person whose opinions about insurance companies cd hardly get any more negative, I got a good laugh out of the inside front page blurb:
""To me, the clinics were emblems of the Company's concern for the world. In any imaginable disaster—even if some fantastic plague struck the entire race at once—the affected population could be neatly and effectively preserved until medicine could catch up with their cures.
""To Rena, they were prisons big enough to hold the race.
""It was time to find out which of us was right.""
The front cover has a sort of Surrealist artwork that I like very much but that's completely irrelevant to the story. This bk's from 1955 originally, but printed in 1962. The cover price is 40¢. Looking online it seems that the average price for such a thing these days might be $16. According to an online inflation calendar that 1962 40¢ shd be worth $3.72 in 2022. What am I missing here? Well, one thing that's interesting is the way POD (Print On Demand) printers (such as Amazon) have effected the market. I love POD printing.. but, at the same time, I know from dealing w/ these printers that they demand the setting of prices based on 1. what they're charging you for the printing, 2. the discount you're expected to offer book dealers. The gist of it is that they force your price up to hypothetically accomodate a 30 to 55% discount to dealers, wch effects the price dramatically, but the dealers aren't going to buy POD bks no matter what. Hence, the prices are dramatically driven up for purely hypothetical reasons that're presented to the person setting those prices as somehow 'real'. If I pay the POD printer $9 to print a bk I can't then sell it for $10, I have to sell if for over $20 to hypothetically make a profit. The POD company won't allow me to sell it for less. I'm not a businessperson, despite having owned a business, so there's probably something I'm missing here that someone else can explain better but it seems to me that the price for getting that bk made then becomes, essentially, $20. But I digress.
I was telling a friend that I was reading this & that it was very good & that I'd never heard of the author before. I further explained that pulp writers often use pseudonymns & that I figured that was the case here. A little research revealed that "Edson McCann" was Frederik Pohl & Lester del Rey & that this was the only bk they coauthored under that name. The cover of the bk proudly exclaims that it's the "winner of the galaxy-simon & schuster science-fiction contest". This bk having been written in 1955 but this edition having been published in 1962 coupled w/ Pohl having been the editor of Galaxy from roughly 1959 to 1969 might explain the fictional author identity if there was some perceived conflict-of-interest along the way. Furthermore, Pohl hired Judy-Lyn del Rey as his assistant editor at Galaxy & If. I don't mention these things in some sort of spirit of 'muck-raking', I just find it interesting imagining why some people might use pseudonymns.
The main character, Adjuster Wills, works for The Company & starts off as a somewhat predictable Company Man, loyal.. & naive. He's been transferred & promoted to a branch in Italy.
"I got as far as the exit to the train shed. There was a sudden high, shrill blast of whistles and a scurrying, and out of the confusion of persons milling about there emerged orders. At every doorway stood three uniformed Company expediters; squads of expediters formed almost before my eyes all over the train shed; single expediters appeared and took up guard positions at every stair well and platform head. It was a triumph of organization. In no more than ten seconds a confused crowd was brought under instant control." - p 6
"Expediters" being a euphemism for Company soldiers. The Company has ostensibly stopped war, fires, disease, etc.. but, oh well, there was a little nuclear war in the area that Wills has arrived at not so long ago.
"—still there were all the subsidiary loss and damage claims of the Neapolitan government's bureaus and departments, almost everyone of them non-cancellable. It amounted to billions and billions of lire. Just looking at some of the amounts on some of the vouchers before me made my head swim. And the same, of course, would be true in Sicily. Though they would naturally be handled by the Sicilian office, not by us. But the cost of this one brief, meager little war between Naples and Siciliy, less than ten thousand casualties, lasting hardly more than a week, must have set the Comapny's reserves back hundreds of millions of dollars." - p 20
"It was plain in history, for all to see. Once the world had been turbulent and distressed, and the Company had smoothed it out. It started with fires and disease. When the first primitive insurance companies—there were more than one in the early days—began offering protection against the hazards of fire, they had found it wise to try to prevent fires. There were the advertising campaigns with their wistful-eyed bears, pleading with smokers not to drop their lighted cigarettes in the dry forest; the technical bureaus like the Underwriter's Laboratory, testing electrical equipment, devising intricate and homely gimmicks like the underwriter's knot; the Fire Patrol in the big cities that followed up the city-owned Fire Department; the endless educational sessions in the schools. . . . And fires decreased." - p 21
But, HEY! They weren't counting on the highly anomolous Mr. Zorchi who cd go thru any sort of ordinarily fatal experience & recover - even to the extent of growing back missing limbs. & Zorchi cd collect insurance money.. over & over. Can't have that.
"He said resentfully, "You see what we're up against? And none of the things you are about to say help. There is no mistake in the records—they've been double- and triple-checked. There is no possibility that another man, or men, substituted for Zorchi—fingerprints check every time. The three times he lost his arms, retina prints checked. There is no possibility that the doctors were bribed, or that he lost a little more of his leg, for instance, in each accident—the severed sections were recovered, and they were complete. Wills, this guy grows new arms and legs like a crab!"" - p 24
& then there're the vaults, the deep-freezes where currently untreable patients are cryogenically preserved until such time that they can be cured - or is that all that they're being used for?
""I mean, I was wondering what you were doing here."
"The surprise became overt. "Vaults," he said succinctly. I prodded no further. I knew what he meant by vaults, of course. It was part of the Company's beneficent plan for ameliorating the effects of even such tiny wars as the Naples-Sicily affair that those who suffered radiation burns got the best treatment possible. And the best treatment, of course, was suspended animation. The deadly danger of radiation burns lay in their cumulative effect" - p 40
Have you ever noticed how many 'beautiful' women turn men from being nice normal passive slaves to the propaganda into people who begin to have 2nd thoughts. Well, Rena does this to Wills.
"["]They won't kill him—they don't have to! They just want him out of the way because he sees the Company for what it is."
"And what is that?"
"She whispered. "Tyranny, Tom."
""Rena, that's silly!" I burst out. "The Company is the hope of the world. If you talk like that you'll be in trouble. That's dangerous thinking, young lady. It attacks the foundations of the whole society."" - p 84
Ha ha! If you know me &/or have read my writings of the past 2 yrs, you'll know that I consider humanity to be now living under the tyranny of the Medical-Industrial Complex - ostensibly for our own good but really mainly for the good of the tirelessly greedy & power-hungry oligarchy. This novel, like so much science-fiction written by people intelligent enuf to see the writing on the wall, predicts the nightmare world humanity's currently being subjected to. Rena's a Thought Criminal & so am I. She's fictional but I'm not. Tom Wills, on the other hand, is SHEEPLE. He's both fictional & all too real.
""I said sharply, "You can't convince me that the Company deliberately falsifies records. Don't forget, Rena, I'm an executive of the Company! Nothing like that could go on!"
"Her eyes flared, but her lips were rebelliously silent. I said furiously, "I'll hear no more of that. Theoretical discussions are all right; I'm as broad-minded as the next man. But when you accuse the Company of outright fraud, you—well, you're mistaken."" - p 88
"From the moment I had heard those piercing words from Slovetski's mouth, I had been obsessed with a vision. A hell bomb on the Home Office. America's eastern seaboard split open; New York a hole in the ocean, from Kingston to Sandy Hook; orange flames spreading across Connecticut and the Pennsylvania corner.
"That was gone—and in its place was something worse.
"Radiocobalt bombing wouldn't simply kill locally by a gout of flaring radiation. It would leave the atmosphere filled with colloidal particles of deadly, radioactive Cobalt-60. A little of that could be used to cure cancers and perform miracles. The amount released from the sheathing of cobalt—normal, "safe" cobalt—around an fissioning hydrogen bomb could kill a world. A single bomb of that kind could wipe out all life on earth, as I remembered my schooling." - p 125
Well, obviously, the ante has been considerably upped by p 125 as the quote above demonstrates. Somewhat oddly, tho, the reason why this passage 'caught my eye' is not b/c of the perfectly reasonable & justified fear of nuclear annihilation particularly common to scientists & science fiction writers in the 1st 2 decades ensuing after the unforgiveable bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki but, instead, the mention of "Sandy Hook", a place I'd never heard of until the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting of December 14, 2021. To have that shooting imagistically connected to a nuclear holocaust resonated strangely in my mind.
All in all, I'm very glad I stumbled across this bk. Science Fiction, my favorite genre, is filled w/ highly inspired work that tends to become obscure entirely too fast. Hence, it's my job to remind people of what's out there.
Edson McCann's Preferred Risk
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 28-March 4, 2022
As a person whose opinions about insurance companies cd hardly get any more negative, I got a good laugh out of the inside front page blurb:
""To me, the clinics were emblems of the Company's concern for the world. In any imaginable disaster—even if some fantastic plague struck the entire race at once—the affected population could be neatly and effectively preserved until medicine could catch up with their cures.
""To Rena, they were prisons big enough to hold the race.
""It was time to find out which of us was right.""
The front cover has a sort of Surrealist artwork that I like very much but that's completely irrelevant to the story. This bk's from 1955 originally, but printed in 1962. The cover price is 40¢. Looking online it seems that the average price for such a thing these days might be $16. According to an online inflation calendar that 1962 40¢ shd be worth $3.72 in 2022. What am I missing here? Well, one thing that's interesting is the way POD (Print On Demand) printers (such as Amazon) have effected the market. I love POD printing.. but, at the same time, I know from dealing w/ these printers that they demand the setting of prices based on 1. what they're charging you for the printing, 2. the discount you're expected to offer book dealers. The gist of it is that they force your price up to hypothetically accomodate a 30 to 55% discount to dealers, wch effects the price dramatically, but the dealers aren't going to buy POD bks no matter what. Hence, the prices are dramatically driven up for purely hypothetical reasons that're presented to the person setting those prices as somehow 'real'. If I pay the POD printer $9 to print a bk I can't then sell it for $10, I have to sell if for over $20 to hypothetically make a profit. The POD company won't allow me to sell it for less. I'm not a businessperson, despite having owned a business, so there's probably something I'm missing here that someone else can explain better but it seems to me that the price for getting that bk made then becomes, essentially, $20. But I digress.
I was telling a friend that I was reading this & that it was very good & that I'd never heard of the author before. I further explained that pulp writers often use pseudonymns & that I figured that was the case here. A little research revealed that "Edson McCann" was Frederik Pohl & Lester del Rey & that this was the only bk they coauthored under that name. The cover of the bk proudly exclaims that it's the "winner of the galaxy-simon & schuster science-fiction contest". This bk having been written in 1955 but this edition having been published in 1962 coupled w/ Pohl having been the editor of Galaxy from roughly 1959 to 1969 might explain the fictional author identity if there was some perceived conflict-of-interest along the way. Furthermore, Pohl hired Judy-Lyn del Rey as his assistant editor at Galaxy & If. I don't mention these things in some sort of spirit of 'muck-raking', I just find it interesting imagining why some people might use pseudonymns.
The main character, Adjuster Wills, works for The Company & starts off as a somewhat predictable Company Man, loyal.. & naive. He's been transferred & promoted to a branch in Italy.
"I got as far as the exit to the train shed. There was a sudden high, shrill blast of whistles and a scurrying, and out of the confusion of persons milling about there emerged orders. At every doorway stood three uniformed Company expediters; squads of expediters formed almost before my eyes all over the train shed; single expediters appeared and took up guard positions at every stair well and platform head. It was a triumph of organization. In no more than ten seconds a confused crowd was brought under instant control." - p 6
"Expediters" being a euphemism for Company soldiers. The Company has ostensibly stopped war, fires, disease, etc.. but, oh well, there was a little nuclear war in the area that Wills has arrived at not so long ago.
"—still there were all the subsidiary loss and damage claims of the Neapolitan government's bureaus and departments, almost everyone of them non-cancellable. It amounted to billions and billions of lire. Just looking at some of the amounts on some of the vouchers before me made my head swim. And the same, of course, would be true in Sicily. Though they would naturally be handled by the Sicilian office, not by us. But the cost of this one brief, meager little war between Naples and Siciliy, less than ten thousand casualties, lasting hardly more than a week, must have set the Comapny's reserves back hundreds of millions of dollars." - p 20
"It was plain in history, for all to see. Once the world had been turbulent and distressed, and the Company had smoothed it out. It started with fires and disease. When the first primitive insurance companies—there were more than one in the early days—began offering protection against the hazards of fire, they had found it wise to try to prevent fires. There were the advertising campaigns with their wistful-eyed bears, pleading with smokers not to drop their lighted cigarettes in the dry forest; the technical bureaus like the Underwriter's Laboratory, testing electrical equipment, devising intricate and homely gimmicks like the underwriter's knot; the Fire Patrol in the big cities that followed up the city-owned Fire Department; the endless educational sessions in the schools. . . . And fires decreased." - p 21
But, HEY! They weren't counting on the highly anomolous Mr. Zorchi who cd go thru any sort of ordinarily fatal experience & recover - even to the extent of growing back missing limbs. & Zorchi cd collect insurance money.. over & over. Can't have that.
"He said resentfully, "You see what we're up against? And none of the things you are about to say help. There is no mistake in the records—they've been double- and triple-checked. There is no possibility that another man, or men, substituted for Zorchi—fingerprints check every time. The three times he lost his arms, retina prints checked. There is no possibility that the doctors were bribed, or that he lost a little more of his leg, for instance, in each accident—the severed sections were recovered, and they were complete. Wills, this guy grows new arms and legs like a crab!"" - p 24
& then there're the vaults, the deep-freezes where currently untreable patients are cryogenically preserved until such time that they can be cured - or is that all that they're being used for?
""I mean, I was wondering what you were doing here."
"The surprise became overt. "Vaults," he said succinctly. I prodded no further. I knew what he meant by vaults, of course. It was part of the Company's beneficent plan for ameliorating the effects of even such tiny wars as the Naples-Sicily affair that those who suffered radiation burns got the best treatment possible. And the best treatment, of course, was suspended animation. The deadly danger of radiation burns lay in their cumulative effect" - p 40
Have you ever noticed how many 'beautiful' women turn men from being nice normal passive slaves to the propaganda into people who begin to have 2nd thoughts. Well, Rena does this to Wills.
"["]They won't kill him—they don't have to! They just want him out of the way because he sees the Company for what it is."
"And what is that?"
"She whispered. "Tyranny, Tom."
""Rena, that's silly!" I burst out. "The Company is the hope of the world. If you talk like that you'll be in trouble. That's dangerous thinking, young lady. It attacks the foundations of the whole society."" - p 84
Ha ha! If you know me &/or have read my writings of the past 2 yrs, you'll know that I consider humanity to be now living under the tyranny of the Medical-Industrial Complex - ostensibly for our own good but really mainly for the good of the tirelessly greedy & power-hungry oligarchy. This novel, like so much science-fiction written by people intelligent enuf to see the writing on the wall, predicts the nightmare world humanity's currently being subjected to. Rena's a Thought Criminal & so am I. She's fictional but I'm not. Tom Wills, on the other hand, is SHEEPLE. He's both fictional & all too real.
""I said sharply, "You can't convince me that the Company deliberately falsifies records. Don't forget, Rena, I'm an executive of the Company! Nothing like that could go on!"
"Her eyes flared, but her lips were rebelliously silent. I said furiously, "I'll hear no more of that. Theoretical discussions are all right; I'm as broad-minded as the next man. But when you accuse the Company of outright fraud, you—well, you're mistaken."" - p 88
"From the moment I had heard those piercing words from Slovetski's mouth, I had been obsessed with a vision. A hell bomb on the Home Office. America's eastern seaboard split open; New York a hole in the ocean, from Kingston to Sandy Hook; orange flames spreading across Connecticut and the Pennsylvania corner.
"That was gone—and in its place was something worse.
"Radiocobalt bombing wouldn't simply kill locally by a gout of flaring radiation. It would leave the atmosphere filled with colloidal particles of deadly, radioactive Cobalt-60. A little of that could be used to cure cancers and perform miracles. The amount released from the sheathing of cobalt—normal, "safe" cobalt—around an fissioning hydrogen bomb could kill a world. A single bomb of that kind could wipe out all life on earth, as I remembered my schooling." - p 125
Well, obviously, the ante has been considerably upped by p 125 as the quote above demonstrates. Somewhat oddly, tho, the reason why this passage 'caught my eye' is not b/c of the perfectly reasonable & justified fear of nuclear annihilation particularly common to scientists & science fiction writers in the 1st 2 decades ensuing after the unforgiveable bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki but, instead, the mention of "Sandy Hook", a place I'd never heard of until the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting of December 14, 2021. To have that shooting imagistically connected to a nuclear holocaust resonated strangely in my mind.
All in all, I'm very glad I stumbled across this bk. Science Fiction, my favorite genre, is filled w/ highly inspired work that tends to become obscure entirely too fast. Hence, it's my job to remind people of what's out there.
July 2, 2012
This is hidden gem in the sf cannon, a fast paced funny adventure.
September 9, 2019
Fred Pohl and Lester Del Ray are the authors. One of the few Pohl collaborations that I will read again. I think it's underrated.
October 15, 2018
Librivox. An original twist to a politically descriptive SF novel, in which the world is run by armed "Expeditors" enforcing the rules of the insurance company with a global monopoly. The hero is originally a company man, a loss adjuster who investigates a case of suspected fraud by a man who makes his living by filing massive personal injury claims, he even appears to have claimed for the loss of his legs more than once! The protagonist believes the company has saved global society, it basically runs a highly stratified capitalist class system based on insurance premiums and risk analysis. Unlike our world in 2018 it provides and accepts social responsibility for healthcare, education/ propaganda, natural disaster mitigation and aid - it even prevents war. The cure for health problems appears to be cryogenic freezing however and as our hero uncovers and ponders a rebel plot against his awesome company he discovers his boss has been using the system in ways that don't match the ethics espoused in the company manual. He starts to change sides as he notices the routine torture practiced by the Expeditors and discovers that they even inter legitimate non violent critics as political opponents.
Optional Rant:At my ripe old age (61) I'm perhaps too cynical to judge this book fairly, it reminds me of 1984, and has the courage to try to form a utopian future via quite amusing satire but I'm already stuck in my political apathy having dispaired of humanity ever getting civilised given the likes of Trump and May. Now I avoid watching the news tell me how the poor have been conned and convinced by the media to vote against their own best interests, they are manipulated by those who idolise greed when they should be using their intelligence to help others and improve the world. Instead even I buy cake made with palm oil, so I'm contributing to the extinction of the orang utan and it's priceless jungle full of nature's secret DNA recipes honed over millions of years of evolution to solve chemical and nano scale problems we don't even know we might need one day. As we should be entering a golden age of scientific progress and free education brought about via the internet I see Science-denying flat-earth alien-abductees with crystal praying homeopathetic alternative rap-chanters droning on and voting to close their minds on one world, accept religious bunkum , ignore habitat loss, climate change, pollution, racism, population versus finite resources... sorry it’s been a long day. It’s probably worth more than 3 stars, especially if you are young and still have an open mind.
It was an interesting world , especially given when it was written, I just need to escape a bit further into Iain Banks or Greg Egan to feel some hope for the future.
Optional Rant:At my ripe old age (61) I'm perhaps too cynical to judge this book fairly, it reminds me of 1984, and has the courage to try to form a utopian future via quite amusing satire but I'm already stuck in my political apathy having dispaired of humanity ever getting civilised given the likes of Trump and May. Now I avoid watching the news tell me how the poor have been conned and convinced by the media to vote against their own best interests, they are manipulated by those who idolise greed when they should be using their intelligence to help others and improve the world. Instead even I buy cake made with palm oil, so I'm contributing to the extinction of the orang utan and it's priceless jungle full of nature's secret DNA recipes honed over millions of years of evolution to solve chemical and nano scale problems we don't even know we might need one day. As we should be entering a golden age of scientific progress and free education brought about via the internet I see Science-denying flat-earth alien-abductees with crystal praying homeopathetic alternative rap-chanters droning on and voting to close their minds on one world, accept religious bunkum , ignore habitat loss, climate change, pollution, racism, population versus finite resources... sorry it’s been a long day. It’s probably worth more than 3 stars, especially if you are young and still have an open mind.
It was an interesting world , especially given when it was written, I just need to escape a bit further into Iain Banks or Greg Egan to feel some hope for the future.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 6, 2018
A single Company insures against all risks, including injury and disease, but even War. Big wars are a thing of the past, but small wars do still happen. And some people do still die. But if someone has an ailment beyond current treatments they get put into suspended animation.
Thomas Wills is a simpled Claims Adjuster, sent to Naples to help deal with the aftermath of one small war, and the extra workload of disability claims due to radiation poisoning.
Having had the pleasure of experiencing the workings of an insurance company for a number of years, I appreciated many small details, but none tickled me as much as when it was said of a co-worker that "he was 'away from his desk'"...
It intrigued me at first how a satisfying story could be written about a claims adjuster or about insurance in general. Well, here it is. A thrilling adventure with many twists and turns.
Frederick Pohl and Lester Del Rey (Edson McCann is fictional) essentially jousted their way through the writing of this novel, but their method of alternating the writing of chapters seems to have increased the sense of excitement and suspense (as they screwed up each other's story plans repeatedly).
I really enjoyed this - but the blurb gave too much away, as they so often do. Fortunately, I didn't read that until the very end!
Thomas Wills is a simpled Claims Adjuster, sent to Naples to help deal with the aftermath of one small war, and the extra workload of disability claims due to radiation poisoning.
Having had the pleasure of experiencing the workings of an insurance company for a number of years, I appreciated many small details, but none tickled me as much as when it was said of a co-worker that "he was 'away from his desk'"...
It intrigued me at first how a satisfying story could be written about a claims adjuster or about insurance in general. Well, here it is. A thrilling adventure with many twists and turns.
Frederick Pohl and Lester Del Rey (Edson McCann is fictional) essentially jousted their way through the writing of this novel, but their method of alternating the writing of chapters seems to have increased the sense of excitement and suspense (as they screwed up each other's story plans repeatedly).
I really enjoyed this - but the blurb gave too much away, as they so often do. Fortunately, I didn't read that until the very end!
May 2, 2025
Diciamo che partivo un pochino prevenuto su questo romanzo, probabilmente per via dell'ambientazione italiana (essenzialmente Napoli ed Anzio, con una improbabile battaglia dentro le rovine di Pompei), ma anche per essere essenzialmente una nuova variazione sul tema de "I Mercanti dello Spazio" e "Gladiator's at Law". Infatti, in questo romanzo Pohl mette in guardia l'umanità dalle polizze assicurative, capaci di poter raggiungere situazioni di potere tali da decidere qualsiasi aspetto della vita di un essere umano. Nonostante una ambientazione veramente basilare, Napoli avrebbe potuto essere una qualsiasi città europea se non fosse per alcuni capitoli ambientati sul Vesuvio, ed una Anzio totalmente anonima, il romanzo funziona piuttosto bene. La trama ha una sua logicità di fondo, e non mancano anche momenti piuttosto poetici, come quando il gruppetto protagonista sfreccia per una Napoli completamente deserta, anche se avrei evitato la scena conclusiva di assalto alla clinica, ma credo che un minimo di action era d'obbligo nei romanzi di fantascienza dell'epoca.
December 14, 2022
The premise is dumb. If this book is the model for the archetypal Corporations Rule the World story 'The Space Merchants', it suffers deeply in comparison. Why and how the hell would insurance companies take over the world?
Insurance. In detail. Deathly dull. Insurance is a massive scam?! WHO KNEW?! (I did. Why wouldn't go invest, rather than take a punt and guarantee you lose? The companies work their asses off to make sure they don't pay you.)
So, when actual things start happening in this story about about the two thirds mark, they are even more ridiculous. Just what the hell did [insert antagonist] do THAT for?
It won an award, it seems, on a lie. This is one half study in nonsense, one half study in nonsensical events. (The implication is that the mega-nuke takes days, possibly weeks, to land. WHAT?!)
Insurance. In detail. Deathly dull. Insurance is a massive scam?! WHO KNEW?! (I did. Why wouldn't go invest, rather than take a punt and guarantee you lose? The companies work their asses off to make sure they don't pay you.)
So, when actual things start happening in this story about about the two thirds mark, they are even more ridiculous. Just what the hell did [insert antagonist] do THAT for?
It won an award, it seems, on a lie. This is one half study in nonsense, one half study in nonsensical events. (The implication is that the mega-nuke takes days, possibly weeks, to land. WHAT?!)
July 19, 2017
Preferred Risk, preferred discussion
Author Pahl presents a view of a future world which offers the reader the opportunity to think about and carefully analyze whether real mankind can ever create a more perfect world for ALL. Can a single person, or even a chosen group, accomplish such a future? Can a few evil, greedy, power hungry always deny progress? Are the checks and balances of the USA likely to lead to a more perfect world? I hope future writers will add to the discussion Pahl offers with this tale.
Author Pahl presents a view of a future world which offers the reader the opportunity to think about and carefully analyze whether real mankind can ever create a more perfect world for ALL. Can a single person, or even a chosen group, accomplish such a future? Can a few evil, greedy, power hungry always deny progress? Are the checks and balances of the USA likely to lead to a more perfect world? I hope future writers will add to the discussion Pahl offers with this tale.
June 11, 2023
🖊 My review: This is a great science fiction story; recommended.
"Winner of the $6,500 Galaxy-Simon & Schuster novel contest, this taut suspense story asks the challenging question: how dangerous would it be to live in a rigidly risk-free world?"
✔️Published in Galaxy Science Fiction June, July, August, September 1955. .
🤔 My rating 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
🟣 Media form: Kindle version.
🟢 Media form Project Gutenberg.
🚀●▬●💫 🪐 💫●▬●🚀
"Winner of the $6,500 Galaxy-Simon & Schuster novel contest, this taut suspense story asks the challenging question: how dangerous would it be to live in a rigidly risk-free world?"
✔️Published in Galaxy Science Fiction June, July, August, September 1955. .
🤔 My rating 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
🟣 Media form: Kindle version.
🟢 Media form Project Gutenberg.
🚀●▬●💫 🪐 💫●▬●🚀
December 16, 2018
3.5 stars. First published in 1955, this pulp sci-fi novel describes a world controlled by one single insurance company (called Company). One's premium, from A to E, dictates the quality of one's meals, accommodation, travel, healthcare ... down to the decades of 'suspension' one receives, in frozen vaults, awaiting cures for as-yet-incurable diseases. ... But perhaps these vaults have a more sinister purpose?
sony-or-android
May 2, 2021One of the relatively few by del Rey avl. on project gutenberg. Originally a three part serial in Galaxy magazine, summer 1955, which is what I'll be reading... I have no idea if it was 'fixed-up' for release as a book.
I also don't know how he chose the pseudonym or how different from the del Rey I love in short stories wrote this, or if McCann has a very different voice or focus....
I also don't know how he chose the pseudonym or how different from the del Rey I love in short stories wrote this, or if McCann has a very different voice or focus....
September 30, 2022
Found in a little free library, this is the story of a future where everyone and everything is owned by "The Company". It seems okay but in reality is a caste system much like Huxley's Brave New World. Our hero is a fellow who was all in but things can change. A thrilling ride to a "end" of the status quo.
April 29, 2023
It's a bit old fashioned, and I loved it. The SF book in which the every man ends up fighting to save a girl, and with each adventure the stakes grow, until he's fighting to save the world. Fun, a little funny. Easy to enjoy.
Good narrator.
Good narrator.
September 7, 2017
Great plot, quite unique but the suspense tapers of in the end.
July 19, 2019
Got a kick out of the setting (insurance company rules the world) and the protagonist. His love interest was rather under developed, but that's to be expected given when this book was published.
February 13, 2021
Kind of awesome in an unexpected way. The attitude toward women is ridiculous but the takedown of corporate overreach is great.
September 10, 2023
Somewhat amusing but not terribly interesting. A pulpy story with unlikely and forgettable characters.
March 11, 2017
Idea was quite ok about world managed by insurance company, but execution was not smooth at all.
May 11, 2008
Recommended long ago by my mother. I was missing one issue from the original serialization in my parents' collection of science fiction magazines from the 50's. Very annoying. So I found an aging paperback to finally read it.
The story presents the interesting premise of a united and peaceful, if sterile and not quite perfectly peaceful, world order has come out of the chaos of near annihilation by the work of a great global insurance company (the Company) that runs everything with the goal of minimizing losses on claims. Every aspect of this society is based on insurance. One's meals are covered by the Blue Plate plan (class A if one is fortunate, most get by on class B or C cuisine). One in insured against war and catastrophe under the Blue Bolt plan. etc.
The protagonist is total Company man, an adjuster on assigment in Naples to help with the overload of claims caused by the recent limited nuclear exchange between Naples and Sicily. (This world is not quite perfectly peaceful, the Company apparently allows this so that people will have a reason to keep up their policies. I wonder why the Company which successfully all but controls access to nuclear materials, chooses such an extreme and costly way to market their policies, rather than allow a little conventional war. The reason seems be part of making the plot work.) Unknown to him, he has also been brought in by the principal bad guy, a high ranking officer of The Company, to infiltrate and betray a resistance group. As he meets more people outside the system he slowly, ever so slowly, comes to realize that there is something rotten in the Home Office, and that everything the Company does is not for the common good. He is soon plunged into a sequence of events, adventures and near disasters that leaves him in charge of the future and in possession of the beautiful woman of the resistance that he meets early on.
This is better than average example of a basic science fiction pulp novel scheme. Better because its premise is ingenious and still relevant. Better because it does manage to perserve much mystery about what's what as its first person narrative only lets us in on things as the protagonist learns them. Better because it manages to provide a positive ending despite many of the worst things, such as the entire world being polluted with nuclear fallout with a very long half-life, that could happen happening. And lastly because it does not start off with the hoary cliche of putting the protagonists name in the first sentence which seems standard (even mandated by the editors perhaps) in this genre.
It does employ a major Deus Ex Machina in the form of an adjunct character who has the unexplained ability to regenerate limbs like a salamander and generally recovers from almost any insult (like radiation poisoning, long term sedation etc) that would kill or disable ordinary people, at the price of having a large and insatiable appetite. He is introduced to the story very neatly as the protagonist's first job in Naples. The Company wants him stopped because he keeps collecting large double indemnity claims for the accidental loss of limbs, limbs that he regrows and loses again and again with fully paid up insurance each time.
When I found it in some old Galaxy magazines this story was being promoted as the winner of a writing contest. This is a bit suspicious when one considers that the author Edson McCann is a pseudonym for two established insiders, Frederik Pohl and Lester del Rey. How many entries were there in this so-called contest? It reeks of hype based on the false promise of a fine new talent being revealed from of a mass of contestants.
The story presents the interesting premise of a united and peaceful, if sterile and not quite perfectly peaceful, world order has come out of the chaos of near annihilation by the work of a great global insurance company (the Company) that runs everything with the goal of minimizing losses on claims. Every aspect of this society is based on insurance. One's meals are covered by the Blue Plate plan (class A if one is fortunate, most get by on class B or C cuisine). One in insured against war and catastrophe under the Blue Bolt plan. etc.
The protagonist is total Company man, an adjuster on assigment in Naples to help with the overload of claims caused by the recent limited nuclear exchange between Naples and Sicily. (This world is not quite perfectly peaceful, the Company apparently allows this so that people will have a reason to keep up their policies. I wonder why the Company which successfully all but controls access to nuclear materials, chooses such an extreme and costly way to market their policies, rather than allow a little conventional war. The reason seems be part of making the plot work.) Unknown to him, he has also been brought in by the principal bad guy, a high ranking officer of The Company, to infiltrate and betray a resistance group. As he meets more people outside the system he slowly, ever so slowly, comes to realize that there is something rotten in the Home Office, and that everything the Company does is not for the common good. He is soon plunged into a sequence of events, adventures and near disasters that leaves him in charge of the future and in possession of the beautiful woman of the resistance that he meets early on.
This is better than average example of a basic science fiction pulp novel scheme. Better because its premise is ingenious and still relevant. Better because it does manage to perserve much mystery about what's what as its first person narrative only lets us in on things as the protagonist learns them. Better because it manages to provide a positive ending despite many of the worst things, such as the entire world being polluted with nuclear fallout with a very long half-life, that could happen happening. And lastly because it does not start off with the hoary cliche of putting the protagonists name in the first sentence which seems standard (even mandated by the editors perhaps) in this genre.
It does employ a major Deus Ex Machina in the form of an adjunct character who has the unexplained ability to regenerate limbs like a salamander and generally recovers from almost any insult (like radiation poisoning, long term sedation etc) that would kill or disable ordinary people, at the price of having a large and insatiable appetite. He is introduced to the story very neatly as the protagonist's first job in Naples. The Company wants him stopped because he keeps collecting large double indemnity claims for the accidental loss of limbs, limbs that he regrows and loses again and again with fully paid up insurance each time.
When I found it in some old Galaxy magazines this story was being promoted as the winner of a writing contest. This is a bit suspicious when one considers that the author Edson McCann is a pseudonym for two established insiders, Frederik Pohl and Lester del Rey. How many entries were there in this so-called contest? It reeks of hype based on the false promise of a fine new talent being revealed from of a mass of contestants.
February 1, 2012
It's a real pity that this one wasn't more focused, since it's a fascinating premise: a world so risk-averse that an insurance company literally rules the world. However, the setting is only reasonably well exploited for perhaps the first third or half of the novel. The remainder is spent shuttling our main characters back and forth from one poorly explained encounter to another at breakneck speed, transforming the potentially deep and intricate villain into a standard-issue dystopian tyrant, and, ultimately, discovering how poorly Asimov and Del Rey write characters once they've lost track of their premise.
May 6, 2013
I really can't recall much about this book except that it made a profound impact upon me when I was about 13 years old. I remember being intrigued and captivated by the "fight against the establishment" nature of the story. I was also shocked (as a 13 year old)with the graphic portrayal of the characters. I read it at least a couple of times and the copy I still have that was my stepdad's was quite the worse for the wear.
I really should dig it up and see if still if it holds up today.
I really should dig it up and see if still if it holds up today.
November 29, 2011
Well, I liked it well enough to finish it, but I'm glad I got it for free along with a bunch of other old SciFi books. The story was a chaotic ride, sometimes amusing and sometimes exasperating, but it kept pulling me forward, and that's the main thing. Honestly, my favorite part was the From the Authors section at the back. It was a fascinating view into the world of publishing in the 1950's.
November 12, 2014
1982 grade F
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