The 1950s Sci-Fi Novel That Predicted Life in 2023

Sci-fi classic Space Merchants is often described as a wild satire on the 50s-era world of advertising and corporate life with some extrapolations into space travel and climate change. In fact, it’s a pretty good description of a world ruled by Rupert “24/7 lies” Murdoch and Richard “Oxycontin” Sackler. In other words, now.

Of course, you should read The Space Merchants, and please ignore the clueless reviews on Amazon about it being dated, or the world it depicts “does not match” our own. Written by Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth way back in 1953, Space Merchants may have at the time — well, even into the early aughts — fit snugly into the sci-fi dystopia genre. It described an over-populated world, circa 2039, suffering from droughts, along with food, oil, and other resource shortages and in which capitalism is in its death throes.

The only way for profits to continue is for the private sector to ramp up demand by making advertising a part of every nanosecond of daily life, create cheap industrial substitutes for food, and get people addicted by adding amphetamines to just about everything. It was a dark satire on consumerism, but too far fetched to be taken seriously as a possible future.

For example, here’s Pohl and Kornbluth describing a fake food product called Crunchies that