The merchants' war
by Frederik Pohl · first published 1984
6mentions
5recommended by
6HN commenters
2009–2025first – last mentioned
83% recommend17% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Satirical sequel to The Space Merchants, set in a world run by advertising firms. It offers a sharp, uncomfortably familiar take on consumer culture and suits fans of dystopian satire.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
See https://openlibrary.org/works/OL60902W/The_merchants'_war
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
I would recommend "The Space Merchants" by Cyril Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl, and also the sequel, "The Merchants' War" by Frederik Pohl. They predate the cyberpunk era, but you'll find what you're looking for in them.
on “A ‘Grass-Roots’ Campaign to Take Down Amazon Is Funded By Its Biggest Rivals” ↗I encourage you to read "The Merchants War" by Fredrick Pohl
on “How In-Vitro Meat will Change Our Lives” ↗I also recommend "The Merchants' War" from Frederik Pohl. Its satirical description of a word dominated by advertisement companies resembles ours painfully. Cannot find quotes of it, it is not a very popular book as it seems.
on “Ford seeks patent for tech that listens to driver conversations to serve ads” ↗MOKEY-COKE! MOKEY-COKE! MOKEY-COKE! (If you've never read Venus, Inc. it's even better than Manna and it's more on-point; and it was written in the 1950s!) https://smile.amazon.com/Venus-Inc-Space-Merchants-War/dp/B0...
on “Tencent deploys facial recognition to detect minors gaming at night” ↗I would also recommend "Merchants war" by Fredrick Phol. WWIII was won by Madison Ave.
on “What if we made advertising illegal?” ↗…mentioned, is more apropos to current circumstance than are the left wing "utopias" depicted in 1984 and BNW. As such, while I don't discourage you from reading The Space Merchants (or its 1984 sequel, The Merchants' War -- which I haven't read), I'm not saying it's a fabulous piece of literature. Pohl[0][2] has written much better stuff, with similar cynicism but significantly better plotting and character development…
on “We should have the ability to run any code we want on hardware we own” ↗