{"id":372,"date":"2006-09-22T02:24:37","date_gmt":"2006-09-22T06:24:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/s265039441.onlinehome.us\/philpaine\/?p=372"},"modified":"2018-08-20T20:02:32","modified_gmt":"2018-08-21T00:02:32","slug":"14777-%c2%a0%c2%a0-cyril-m-kornbluth-the-syndic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=372","title":{"rendered":"14777. (Cyril M. Kornbluth) The Syndic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"06-09-22<\/a>There was some\u00adthing absolute\u00adly won\u00adder\u00adful about the kind of sci\u00adence fic\u00adtion that was pub\u00adlished in the Amer\u00adi\u00adcan SF<\/span> mag\u00ada\u00adzines in the 1950\u2019s. While the \u201cmain\u00adstream\u201d fic\u00adtion writ\u00aders strug\u00adgled to obey increas\u00adingly rigid notions of \u201creal\u00adism\u201d and the short sto\u00adry vir\u00adtu\u00adally dis\u00adap\u00adpeared as an art form in the lit\u00ader\u00adary world, Sci\u00adence Fic\u00adtion writ\u00aders flour\u00adished in their small ghet\u00adto, free to let their imag\u00adi\u00adna\u00adtions roam, and free to sat\u00adi\u00adrize soci\u00adety with infi\u00adnite jest. That won\u00adder\u00adful cre\u00adative caul\u00addron gave us Theodore Stur\u00adgeon, Philip K. Dick, Avram David\u00adson, Edgar Pang\u00adborn, William Tenn, Alfred Bester, and many, many more. These were among the finest writ\u00aders Amer\u00adica ever pro\u00adduced. There was one writer that almost all these men looked up to and admired, and that was Cyril M. Korn\u00adbluth. Sad\u00adly, his career end\u00aded with pre\u00adma\u00adture death in 1958, after only sev\u00aden years of writ\u00ading. But in those sev\u00aden years he pro\u00adduced sev\u00aderal mas\u00adter\u00adpieces in col\u00adlab\u00ado\u00adra\u00adtion with Fredrik Pohl \u2014such as the bril\u00adliant satire of adver\u00adtis\u00ading, The Space Mer\u00adchants<\/em>, and the remark\u00adably pre\u00adscient Glad\u00adi\u00ada\u00adtor-at-Law<\/em>. He also pro\u00adduced sev\u00aderal fine nov\u00adels on his own, much more bit\u00ading (per\u00adhaps because Pohl\u2019s mel\u00adlower per\u00adson\u00adal\u00adity influ\u00adenced the col\u00adlab\u00ado\u00adra\u00adtions), as well as a pletho\u00adra of bril\u00adliant short sto\u00adries. \u2018The Lit\u00adtle Black Bag\u2019 and \u2018The March\u00ading Morons\u2019 are per\u00adfect exam\u00adples of his superb artistry.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"06-09-22<\/a><\/span>A fine intro\u00adduc\u00adtion to Kornbluth\u2019s work would be this nov\u00adel, The Syn\u00addic<\/em>, pub\u00adlished in 1953. It posits a future in which gov\u00adern\u00adments have col\u00adlapsed under their own weight of bureau\u00adcracy and been replaced by the Mafia. In 1953, it was far-out whim\u00adsy. How would an East\u00adern Euro\u00adpean read it today? The real plea\u00adsure in read\u00ading Korn\u00adbluth is that his sharp satire is deliv\u00adered in a crisp, pure\u00adly col\u00adlo\u00adquial style, as if Damon Run\u00adyan where writ\u00ading soci\u00ado\u00adlog\u00adi\u00adcal Sci\u00adence Fic\u00adtion. A seri\u00adous writer, today, would make heavy going of this stuff, stretch\u00ading it out and fill\u00ading it with styl\u00adis\u00adtic tricks and learned ref\u00ader\u00adences. Korn\u00adbluth wrote like an expe\u00adri\u00adenced bar\u00adber.\u2026 a few deft strokes with a very sharp blade, done like mag\u00adic, and over before you can catch your breath. Fifty-three years have passed since this nov\u00adel hit the stands, and it is not quaint. It\u2019s still a good, clean shave.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was some\u00adthing absolute\u00adly won\u00adder\u00adful about the kind of sci\u00adence fic\u00adtion that was pub\u00adlished in the Amer\u00adi\u00adcan SF<\/span> mag\u00ada\u00adzines in the 1950\u2019s. While the \u201cmain\u00adstream\u201d fic\u00adtion writ\u00aders strug\u00adgled to obey increas\u00adingly rigid notions of \u201creal\u00adism\u201d and the short sto\u00adry virtually \u2026<\/p>\n

Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[946,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-b-reading","category-bu-reading-2006"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=372"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9427,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions\/9427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}