The Marching Morons
1951
A savage, funny, deeply unsettling portrait of a future where stupidity has won. When Efim Hawkins, a potter who happens to be one of the last intelligent people on Earth, revives John Barlow from cryogenic sleep, Barlow discovers that humanity has bred itself into mediocrity. The average IQ now hovers around 45. Billboard advertisements appeal to the mentality of toddlers. The few smart people hide in plain sight, terrified of attracting attention. Barlow sees opportunity: why fight the tide of idiocy when you can surf it? What follows is a razor-sharp satire of democracy, advertising, and the eternal temptation of demagogues. Kornbluth wrote this in 1951, and every year since has made it feel less like dystopia and more like reportage. It's uncomfortable, unflinching, and frequently hilarious in that way that truths about ourselves always are.
Editions
X-Ray
“Tinny-Peete had no wish to be torn limb from limb; he knew very well that it would end that way if the population learned from this anachronism that there was a small elite which considered itself head, shoulders, trunk and groin above the rest. The fact that this assumption was perfectly true and the fact that the elite was condemned by its superiority to a life of the most grinding toil would not be considered; the difference would.””
— C. M. Kornbluth
“He added an obscenity current in Barlow's time, a standard but physiologically impossible directive, and strutted off hulking his shoulders and balling his fists.””
— C. M. Kornbluth
“The last thing he learned was that death is the end of pain.””
— C. M. Kornbluth
