Originally posted by: ShotgunSteven
Title: Preferred Risk
Author: Frederik Pohl &
Lester del Rey writing as Edson McCann
Genre: Science Fiction
Comments: This book originally started out as a collaborative project between Pohl and del Rey. Their intent was to sell it to Galaxy magazine as a 20,000 word novelette. Instead, the editor of Galaxy, Horace Gold, told them they should expand it to a 60,000 word novel. This was due to the fact that Galaxy magazine was running a contest to attract new novel-writing talent, and none of the submissions were worthy of a win. Since the purpose of the contest was to attract new writers, Gold insisted that Pohl and del Rey come up with a pseudonym to submit the winning novel under. Thus was born Edson McCann and his one novel writing career.
On the book itself: Preferred Risk smacks of a somewhat less grim 1984. Instead of Big Brother, there is the Company. The Company is in fact an insurance company. In this world, the Company runs all. You do not buy food. You buy an insurance policy against hunger. You do not buy a home, but rather purchase insurance against being homeless. The wars of the past are no more. Well, the big ones anyway. The Company controls the arms market, particularly fissionables. They make sure each side in the conflict doesn't get an overabundance of nuclear weapons.
Disease is at an end. Almost. If you suffer from a condition they can't cure, they freeze you in their huge underground vaults until a cure can be found, and you collect disability all the while.
Unfortunately, one Claims Adjuster discovers that not everyone in the vaults is necessarily a medical case waiting for a cure. In fact, some are there for no other reason than to get them out of the way. After all, what better method for dealing with malcontents that don't like the oppressiveness of the Company than to declare them to have radiation poisoning, so that they must remain in suspended animation until the radioactivity about their person has died down to the point where it won't kill them once they are reanimated?
How does one fight a world-spanning Company with branch offices in every city on the planet? How do you kill a Hydra with a multitude of heads, and an endless supply of money coursing through its veins?
You cash in the biggest insurance policy of them all and bleed it dry...
All in all, it is a fun book from the age of science fiction where authors were not afraid to say more with less. Considering that it was written in 1955, it has some amazing parallels to the Nanny State that many want to bring about today. It is long out of print, but definitely worth the cost of a few dollars for picking up a used copy.