The Joy Makers

Gunn's 1961 novel is a fix-up of a short story and two novellas from the 1950's, not an uncommon path for SF to take from the magazines to paperback at that time. The narratives, set centuries apart, chart what happens when happiness transforms from a desire, to a possibility, to law, and then to something much darker and stranger.

In the opening story, which takes place either in mid-twentieth century America or a near future, Josh Hunt is a successful manufacturer and he is not happy. He is tired of his wife and family; he has union problems at work; and, his health is not too good. He has ulcers and drinks too much, which I suppose is 1950's-speak for alcoholic. Everything pisses him off, especially these dinky ads that appear in the newspaper for Hedonics, Inc. He dismisses them a fly-by-night operation that promises to make their clients happy. He is even grouchier when everyone he sees during the day starts greeting him with a cheery, "Joy!" Eventually he makes an appointment with an eye towards exposing Hedonics, Inc., for the sham he is sure it is. But a few minutes in their "diagnostic chair" cures his head cold, his ulcer, and makes him feel really good. He sees the business potential here, but he finds that the $100 introductory price is just the beginning. Hedonics. Inc., however, is a start-up already planning its global reach and customers are flocking in. (I confess I had to read another review to catch the parody here of Scientology, which when Gunn was writing was just beginning to make its mark, especially in the SF world thanks to founder L. Ron Hubbarb. But then, I try not to think about Scientology very much at all.)

A century or so later, America and most of the world is now overseen by the Hedonics Consul. Gunn's second protagonist is a trained Hedonist. He oversees the happiness quotient of his community. The principles laid out here have a jumbled history in Greek notions of pleasure as the highest human value, some practical lay psychology, a system of training/indoctrination that begins in pre-school, and the resort to lobotomy for those unfortunates who just don't get it. Our professional hedonist, an honorable man and a true believer, runs foul of the consul and becomes a familiar figure from Gunn's work of the period, a Man on the Run. This portion of the book is enjoyable but the weakest, most predictable narrative.

Centuries later, colonists who have been terraforming Venus realize that they have been invaded by mechanical duplicates who are taking over key positions. Contact with earth and other planet colonies has been cut off for years, and D'glas M'Gregor makes a risky journey back to earth to find answers. They are not pleasant answers. Hedonics has metastasized from well-intentioned idea, to law, to science, to a force that no one could have seen coming but that most everyone on earth has adjusted to. Once again, pursuit and escape are the order of the day, but this final vision is of a much stranger, more fully realized, and compelling world than what Gunn offered in part two.