#41. JEM By Frederik Pohl

Published : 1979
Pages : 300
Overall Mark : 8/10

The discovery of another habitable world might spell salvation to the three bitterly competing power blocs of the resource-starved 21st century; but when their representatives arrive on Jem, with its multiple intelligent species, they discover instead the perfect situation into which to export their rivalries. Subtitled, with savage irony, 'The Making Of A Utopia', Jem is one of Frederik Pohl's most powerful novels.

FREDERIK POHL (1919-)
Frederik Pohl has been a professional SF writer and editor for nearly 50 years. He first achieved fame for the series of novels he wrote in the 1950s in collaboration with C. M. Kornbluth, notably The Space Merchants and Wolfbane. He grew up in New York, but now lives near Chicago. He won the Nebula Award for best novel in consecutive years with Man Plus and Gateway.

VERDICT
Pohl is a truly gifted writer, and this book is another example of how he can make a political satire out of a sci-fi novel. The ways in which those of the Earth use the colonisation of another planet as a means of obscuring the problems they have among themselves at home is wonderfully handled, and remains a view that many have had about politicians throughout history thus rendering this a timeless classic.