"The Marching Morons" is a science fiction story by American writer Cyril M. Kornbluth, originally published in Galaxy in April 1951. It was included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two after being voted one of the best novellas up to 1965.
In the "Introduction" to The Best of C. M. Kornbluth , Frederik Pohl (Kornbluth's friend and collaborator) explains some of the inspiration to "The Marching Morons". The work was written after Pohl suggested that Kornbluth write a follow-up story that focuses on the future presented in the short story "The Little Black Bag". In contrast to the "little black bag" arriving in the past from the future, Kornbluth wanted to write about a man arriving in the future from the past. To explain sending a man to the future, Kornbluth borrowed from David Butler's 1930 science fiction film Just Imagine , in which a man is struck by lightning, trapped in suspended animation, and reanimated in the future. In "The Marching Morons", after the character John Barlow is told how he had been in a state of suspended animation, Barlow mutters, "Like that movie."
In 1988, real estate agent and con artist John Barlow is placed in suspended animation after a freak accident. He is revived in the distant future, in a confusing world filled with hypersexualized advertisements, vapid entertainment, and people who exhibit erratic, nonsensical behavior. Shortly after being revived, Barlow is introduced to two men, Tinny-Peete and Ryan-Ngana, who inform him that the lamentable state of society is the fault of the "morons", the world's vast population of unintelligent people, who greatly outnumber the much smaller population of intelligent people.
Tinny-Peete and Ryan-Ngana explain to Barlow that the most urgent crisis of their time is the population problem ("Poprob"). Historically, people of higher intelligence often chose to have few children (or no children at all) for pragmatic reasons, while people of lower intelligence, compelled by their sex drives, had larger families and reproduced in greater numbers. By the far future era in which Barlow has awakened, this unbalanced trend has been carried to its logical extreme, with a total world population of five billion morons (with an average IQ of 45) living under the supervision of three million members of an elite, intellectual upper-class who secretly govern world affairs. Both Tinny-Peete and Ryan-Ngana are members of this group.
The simple-minded morons cannot be left to govern themselves or else the world will descend into chaos and war. As a result, the elite minority are effectively "enslaved" by the moron majority, working themselves to exhaustion while attempting to maintain global order and stability. Controlling the morons' population growth is impractical for several reasons, but unless some corrective action is taken, the inevitable outcome will be the depletion of Earth's dwindling natural resources, followed by the total collapse of human civilization. All attempts to solve Poprob have failed, and the elite hope that Barlow, as a man from a different time and with a different perspective on the problem, might be able to offer a novel solution.
Barlow has an idea, but he refuses to elaborate until Tinny-Peete and Ryan-Ngana agree to formally name him dictator of the entire world, promising him wealth, power, and fame. Taking inspiration from his knowledge of fraudulent real estate deals, propaganda techniques employed by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust, and the myth of lemmings drowning themselves in the sea, Barlow devises a plan for the extermination of the moron population. Barlow orchestrates a massive propaganda campaign encouraging the morons to migrate to the planet Venus. The overcrowded and inefficient cities in which the morons reside are to be dismantled, their steel used to construct fleets of rockets ostensibly intended to ferry people to Venus; in reality, because the "rockets" (disguised passenger planes) are not actually capable of space flight, the morons will simply be flown out to sea and disposed of in an orderly fashion. To allay any suspicion, forged postcards are sent from Venusian "colonists" to their families, describing Venus as a lush tropical paradise and encouraging them to follow. The United States Congress, under the control of the elite, promotes the colonization of Venus as an extension of manifest destiny and guarantees Venusian settlers permanent land rights on the planet. This sparks widespread nationalistic fervor as the various nations of Earth all adopt similar approaches and race to reach Venus in order to stake their own claims.
Barlow's plan is a complete success; Earth is gradually emptied of morons and Poprob is solved. While reviewing his ledger, Barlow comes across an entry for an unauthorized project called "Poprobterm". When he demands an explanation, his assistants lead him to a waiting, functional rocket, force him aboard, and immediately launch the rocket into space; the sudden acceleration crushes Barlow against the floor, killing him. The elite, disgusted by Barlow's ruthlessness and cruelty, have disposed of him as part of the "final cleanup" of Poprob.
Cyril M. Kornbluth was an American science fiction author and a member of the Futurians. He used a variety of pen-names, including Cecil Corwin, S. D. Gottesman, Edward J. Bellin, Kenneth Falconer, Walter C. Davies, Simon Eisner, Jordan Park, Arthur Cooke, Paul Dennis Lavond, and Scott Mariner.
Frederik George Pohl Jr. was an American science-fiction writer, editor, and fan, with a career spanning nearly 75 years—from his first published work, the 1937 poem "Elegy to a Dead Satellite: Luna", to the 2011 novel All the Lives He Led.
The Heechee Saga, also known as the Gateway series, is a series of science fiction novels and short stories by Frederik Pohl. The Heechee are an advanced alien race that visited the Solar System hundreds of millennia ago and then mysteriously disappeared. They left behind bases containing artifacts, including working starships, which are discovered and exploited by humanity.
X Minus One is an American half-hour science fiction radio drama series that was broadcast from April 24, 1955, to January 9, 1958, in various timeslots on NBC. Known for high production values in adapting stories from the leading American authors of the era, X Minus One has been described as one of the finest offerings of American radio drama and one of the best science fiction series in any medium.
Frederik Pohl's Gateway is a 1992 interactive fiction video game released by Legend Entertainment, and written by Glen Dahlgren and Mike Verdu. It is based on Frederik Pohl's Heechee universe. It was followed by a sequel Gateway II: Homeworld, in 1993.
The planet Venus has been used as a setting in fiction since before the 19th century. Its opaque cloud cover gave science fiction writers free rein to speculate on conditions at its surface—a "cosmic Rorschach test", in the words of science fiction author Stephen L. Gillett. The planet was often depicted as warmer than Earth but still habitable by humans. Depictions of Venus as a lush, verdant paradise, an oceanic planet, or fetid swampland, often inhabited by dinosaur-like beasts or other monsters, became common in early pulp science fiction, particularly between the 1930s and 1950s. Some other stories portrayed it as a desert, or invented more exotic settings. The absence of a common vision resulted in Venus not developing a coherent fictional mythology, in contrast to the image of Mars in fiction.
Gateway is a 1977 science-fiction novel by American writer Frederik Pohl. It is the opening novel in the Heechee saga, with four sequels that followed. Gateway won the 1978 Hugo Award for Best Novel, the 1978 Locus Award for Best Novel, the 1977 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the 1978 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. The novel was adapted into a computer game in 1992.
The Space Merchants is a 1952 science fiction novel by American writers Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth. Originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine as a serial entitled Gravy Planet, the novel was first published as a single volume in 1953, and has sold heavily since. It deals satirically with a hyper-developed consumerism, seen through the eyes of an advertising executive. In 1984, Pohl published a sequel, The Merchants' War. In 2012, it was included in the Library of America omnibus American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels 1953–1956. Pohl revised the original novel in 2011 with added material and more contemporary references.
The Last Theorem is a 2008 science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl. It was first published in the United Kingdom by HarperVoyager in July 2008, and in the United States by Del Rey Books in August 2008. The book is about a young Sri Lankan mathematician who finds a short proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, while an alien invasion of Earth is in progress.
"The Weapon Too Dreadful To Use" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the May 1939 issue of Amazing Stories and reprinted in the August 1965 issue of Amazing and the 1972 collection The Early Asimov. "The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use" was the eleventh story written by Asimov, and the second to be published.
"Half-Breed" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the February 1940 issue of Astonishing Stories and reprinted in the 1972 collection The Early Asimov. It was the fifteenth story written by Asimov, and the fourth to be published. At 9000 words, it was his longest published story to date.
Super Science Stories was an American pulp science fiction magazine published by Popular Publications from 1940 to 1943, and again from 1949 to 1951. Popular launched it under their Fictioneers imprint, which they used for magazines, paying writers less than one cent per word. Frederik Pohl was hired in late 1939, at 19 years old, to edit the magazine; he also edited Astonishing Stories, a companion science fiction publication. Pohl left in mid-1941 and Super Science Stories was given to Alden H. Norton to edit; a few months later Norton rehired Pohl as an assistant. Popular gave Pohl a very low budget, so most manuscripts submitted to Super Science Stories had already been rejected by the higher-paying magazines. This made it difficult to acquire good fiction, but Pohl was able to acquire stories for the early issues from the Futurians, a group of young science fiction fans and aspiring writers.
The Merchants' War is a 1984 satirical science fiction novel by American writer Frederik Pohl. Set in a near future commercial dystopian interplanetary society, the novel was a sequel to The Space Merchants, and was originally co-published with it as Venus, Inc. Pohl's collaborator in the first novel, C.M. Kornbluth, died in 1958, and so did not contribute to this sequel.
Search the Sky is a satirical science fiction novel by American writers Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth, first published in 1954 by Ballantine Books.
Suspended animation in fiction refers to the temporary cessation of life processes experienced by fictional characters, followed by their subsequent revival. This process is commonly employed as a plot device in science fiction narratives. It is frequently utilized to transport a character from the past to the future or to facilitate interstellar space travel, which necessitates an extended journey for months or years. In addition to accomplishing the character's primary objective in the future, they often encounter the unfamiliarity of a new world, which may bear only faint resemblance to their previous surroundings. On occasion, a character is portrayed as possessing skills or abilities that have become lost to society during their period of suspension, enabling them to assume a heroic role in their new temporal setting.
The Explorers is a collection of science fiction stories by American writer C. M. Kornbluth, originally published in paperback by Ballantine Books in 1954. Ballantine reissued the collection, which was Kornbluth's first, in 1963. While no further editions of the collection were published, six of its nine stories were included in Ballantine's 1977 The Best of C. M. Kornbluth, and all the stories are contained in NESFA's 1997 His Share of Glory: The Complete Short Science Fiction of C. M. Kornbluth.
The Marching Morons (and Other Famous Science Fiction Stories) is a collection of stories by Cyril M. Kornbluth, originally published in paperback by Ballantine Books in 1959. Ballantine reissued the collection in 1963. A Spanish translation, Desfile de Cretines, appeared in 1964. In 1972, the novella from which the collection takes its name was selected by SFWA members as one of the ten best novellas published in the genre before 1966.
This is an incomplete list of works by American space opera and science fiction author Frederik Pohl, including co-authored works.
The Best of C. M. Kornbluth is a collection of science fiction and fantasy short stories by American author C. M. Kornbluth, edited by Frederik Pohl. It was first published in hardback by Nelson Doubleday in October 1976 and in paperback by Ballantine Books in January 1977, as a volume in its Classic Library of Science Fiction. A second hardcover edition was issued by Taplinger in November 1977, and an ebook edition by Faded Page in December 2017.
