THE COMPANY OF THE FUTURE IN SCIENCE-FICTION: CONTINUATIONS AND EVOLUTIONS

Abstract

The Space Merchants (Cyril M. Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl, 1953) and Islands in the Net (Bruce
Sterling, 1988) are two science fiction novels in which large corporations are essential to the
story. This article follows the journey of their respective characters and places the books in the
context of the period of time in which each was published. In doing so, it seeks to analyze the
possible evolution of large corporations. There is a gap of thirty-five years between the two
novels and they reflect both common and different (sometimes opposite) conceptions of the
modern corporation. Both imagine future societies where this corporate structure will play an
increasingly central role. We discuss three main themes in the article. One theme concerns the
corporate profile of the future: what will its functions be, and how will it be organized? Based
on the forecasts of the authors studied, it appears inevitable that the corporation of the future
will be more powerful. A second theme concerns the society in which these corporations will
exist. In this regard, internationalization and globalization need to be addressed, as does the
question of whether the corporation will overtake or subvert the nation state. The final theme
concerns the concept of work life in the future, based on insights from the characters of both
novels. The futures that were imagined continue to resonate deeply with contemporary theories
and observations of the times in which they were written. Although they were writing about
the corporations of tomorrow, the authors of these novels also had much to say about the
world they lived in and its failures and promises.