I go to read more Frederik Pohl

 The Tunnel Under the World by Frederik Pohl is a short story that I discovered when I was I was trying to find a book that had The Wall Around the World in it. I didn’t find a copy of that anthology but I did find out that Project Gutenberg had the text for the The Tunnel Under the World.

I don’t think the story would have had the impact on me that it did if I hadn’t just read the Wall Around the World which blithely glosses over the horrifying implications of the setting. The Tunnel Under the World dives headlong into them.

Spoilers

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Seriously, it’s free on Project Gutenberg 

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Guy Burckhardt slowly realizes that something that is off with the world. For one thing, every day is always June 15th. For another thing, he is being constantly bombarded by advertising for products he’s never heard of. 

More spoilers since the twist is a whopper

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It turns out that the entire town was killed in a massive plant explosion. An unscrupulous businessman copied the brains of as many of the corpses as he could his hands on and put them in tiny robots in a tiny town on a tabletop so he has a a test market that he can do anything to. At the end of the story, Burkhardt is back to being trapped in the endless cycle while the businessman has moved on to political propaganda.

Yes, it turns out to be a horror story. 

The whole concept of robbing the dead of their minds for the purpose of market research is successfully shocking because, wow, is that devaluing human existence to a horrifying degree. And, yet, you have to admit, you can imagine someone doing it if they actually could get away with it and turn a profit. And the antagonist wins.

The story was first published in 1955 and, wow, is it cynical. I had flashbacks of both Groundhog’s Day and The Truman Show but this was much more disturbing than those movies. The fact that the antagonist isn’t a theatrical Doctor Doom or Red Skull bad guy but a perfectly believable businessman just makes the story work.

I have read Fredrik Pohl before this but, man, I need to read more. If the Tunnel Under the World is anything to go by, he had an interesting view of human nature.