Book Review: Swiss Family Robinson, by Johann David Wyss

Very nice book for what it is: a children's story (though many children of our age wouldn't have the patience for a 472 page-long story.) It is a very good vocabulary-booster for one's young ones as well. The details of geography, flora and fauna were hilariously outlandish, and the wrecked ship that carried the family must have been an ancient supertanker, given the fact that it had EVERYTHING KNOWN TO MANKIND in its hold, including a supply of shot and gunpowder that would last the family more than a decade. But other than the humorously impossible bits, it was a good children's adventure. I was glad to spend the time with my ten year old son as we read it together. His frequent outbursts, comments and speculations proved that the book had thoroughly grabbed his imagination. For that I am grateful!

I might add a friendly warning for those of a squeamish nature with regards to animals, guns and hunting: the book might have appropriately been subtitled "SHOOT IT!" Every time the boys see a new and interesting animal, their immediate and automatic response is to shoot it dead. One needs to keep in mind that this was a book written in the 19th century, and sensibilities were much different back then. If one reads the book with tolerance, a good story is still very much in store.

Book Review: The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth

Obviously, this book is significantly dated, people of the time just on the verge of imagining some amazing things.  Very little of what we'd currently call science fiction is in this book; the scifi elements are mostly the backdrop against some incisive social commentary which is very relevant for both that time and this.  Purely as scifi I'd score this only 3/4 stars, but it's what the authors are saying as social criticism that pushes it higher.

Though this book was written in the early '50s, my mind couldn't help but go forward more than a decade, to the set of television's "Bewitched."  I watched that show a lot as a kid.  You'll recall that the husband, Darren Stevens, worked as an advertising executive.  I got nearly as many laughs from the zany ad campaigns Darren and Samantha cooked up as from any of the magic-related hijinks I saw.

Push the McMann & Tate ad firm into the future, and make them sinister.  Now you have a picture of Fowler Schoken Associates.  This ad agency goes beyond the art of punchy slogans; they employ psychological manipulation and drugs in their products which make you addicted to them, and to other products they sell.  Culture, literature, and true education are deviant and blasphemous; decent people just consume and they're content with it.  The advertising elite have the real power in society; even the President of the United States defers to them.  They have enslaved a consuming underclass that lives in brutish conditions and virtual slavery.  What's worse is that the elite has convinced them to be more or less happy in their slavery, except for a few, like the "Consies" (conservationists), that dare to see beyond the illusion and call for a richer, simpler, more purposeful life.

I couldn't help but think about a few mega-retailers in our own time who seem to have permeated every aspect of our lives.  The movie "WALL-E" also forced itself into my memory, as a mega-conglomerate so corrupted the public and the earth that the planet was made uninhabitable by enormous mountains of trash.  This book apparently sounded the warning first, a call to seriously re-examine our materialism before it's too late.  Well, actually, Thoreau was saying this sort of thing long before, but this is the first time I know of that the warning was presented in the scifi genre.

All in all, a very worthwhile book to read; I see why Library of America (I read this book in their "American Science Fiction": vol. 1) published it as a classic.  For our time, it's really archaic, but for the '50s it was great scifi and timeless social commentary.