The Best of C. M. Kornbluth (Magill’s Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature)
At a glance:
- Author: C. M. Kornbluth
- First Published: 1976
- Type of Work: Stories
- Type of Plot: Science fiction—extrapolatory
- Time of Work: The 1950’s to the distant future
- Setting: Various sites, especially cities, on Earth and other planets
- Genres: Short fiction, Science fiction
- Subjects: 1950’s, Intellectuals, Future, Other worlds, Intellect, Advertising, Genocide
- Locales: Earth, Fictional planets
The Plot
Two of C. M. Kornbluth’s most famous stories, the novelettes “The Little Black Bag” (1950) and “The Marching Morons” (1951), posit the same future. Twenty generations from now, prolific, low-IQ groups vastly outnumber intelligent people on Earth because of the latter’s low birthrates. The moronic majority thrives only through the labors of the intellectuals.
The earlier story introduces elderly Bayard Full, a ruined, slum-dwelling, dipsomaniac medical doctor. An accident sends a doctor’s black bag from the future into his possession. Designed for...
[The entire page is 967 words long]
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