SOURCE: "Utopias 2," in New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1960, pp. 118-33.

In the following excerpt, Amis examines the themes of production and consumption in the stories "The Midas Plague," "The Wizards of Fung's Corners," and "The Tunnel under the World. "

We have now reached the point of departure for the consideration, in some detail, of the work of Frederik Pohl, the most consistently able writer science fiction, in the modern sense, has yet produced. His field of interest is contemporary urban society and its chain of production and consumption. He is thus in some sort a novelist of economic man, or, rather, of two overlapping personages within that concept, the well-to-do consumer and the high-level executive who keeps the consumer consuming. An occasional space-ship flashes across his page, but no BEM ever raises its heads there and aliens do not appeal...