Everyone wants to be happy, Right? And if we make everyone else happy, that will help us be happy.

So, this novel starts off happy. A new breed of professionals, called Hedonists, use a combination of folk wisdom and advanced scientific tricks to make people happy. The trouble is, they are so very good at it that eventually a law is passed making it illegal to be unhappy. Unhappy people are arrested and cured; soon they are released as model citizens, very grateful that they were caught. This makes some people so unhappy that they try as hard as they can to look happy ...

I read this back in the 60's and it had a big impact on me then. The final nightmare the book leads up to does not seem quite so far fetched today, so the idea is still very relevant. ( )

Another good example of early science fiction. In this one, it explores the theory that happiness is the true goal of every human and science should make that happen, no matter what. 'No matter what' is of course the eventual result, as the definition of true happiness for humans is perhaps not something a computer and a human would agree on. Nor would all humans agree on a single definition of happiness for all people. Interesting, but I thought the conclusion dragged. ( )

This is another in my 12 in 2012 reads. Twelve novels by authors awarded the Damon Knight Grandmaster Memorial Award by the Science Fiction and Fantasy writers of America. This was much less awful than the previous one on my list.

There were some interesting ideas here about what would happen to society if it became possible to ensure happiness for everyone. Would we all become Lotus Eaters? Is discontent necessary?

The story consists of three sections, each further forward in time as the "science of hedonics" comes to dominate society. They were all interesting, written in clear readable prose and with an underpinning of good what if questions. There was also some fun tech stuff here and there.

I could have done with a little less of the nubile young woman gazing adoringly up at the strong wise man who is inspired by her adoration to struggle to rise to greatness... that's not exactly my favorite trope. There was also a fair tendancy for the plot to suddenly slam to a halt so the man rising to greatness could take a few minutes to lecture the rest of the characters about the intrinsic nature of man and how one should live and etc, and etc, which teetered on the edge of being annoying. But it wasn't unendurable.

On the whole there was more good than bad here, and I liked most of the characters - even the adoring nubiles weren't completely spineless. Its dated, but its still readable, and kind of fun. ( )

My reaction to reading this novel in 1992. Spoilers follow.

“Retrieving the Lost”, Isaac Asimov -- Introduction to this series of neglected classic works.

“Introduction”, George Zebrowski -- Brief summary of the themes and critical responses to Gunn’s novel. Zebrowski compares it to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. I think Gunn’s novel has a much greater philosophical depth if not as much outright, obvious plausibility. Zebrowski makes the valid point that technological advances like virtual reality and biomedical technology make this book more relevant than ever.

“The Joy Makers”, James Gunn -- This is the third novel of Gunn’s I’ve read (the other two were The Burning and The Immortals) and with it I realized Gunn’s works (at least the ones I’ve read) are concerned with the ultimate concerns, goals, and problems of the human condition. Like the other two above novels (or, at least, some of The Burning according to the copyright page), The Joy Makers was written in the fifties and is a fixup. I suspect (without checking the exact dates) that the stories making up most of these novels were written around the same time for they deal with similar themes, specifically humanity’s quest for certain goals and conditions. In The Burning, it was the quest for social and cultural stability in a world continually transformed by science. In The Immortals it was the quest for health and immortality.

The Joy Makers is about the ultimate quest: the quest for happiness. As Gunn points out, entertainment and art evolved to achieve happiness through illusion; technology evolved to free man from the time-consuming task of staying alive culminating in automation to free man from labor; medicine evolved to free the body from pain, philosophy, religion, psychology to free the mind from pain. Happiness is the goal all man’s efforts are directed towards. Gunn’s science of Hedonics delivers it (As Hedonist Wright says happiness is everything money can buy.”).

The first story is strongly reminiscent of Jack Williamson’s “With Folded Hands” in it’s arrival in a town of a mysterious, powerful, technological organization. (Gunn is well aware of Gunn’s work and even wrote a novel with him.) Instead of Williamson’s humanoids, it’s Hedonics Inc. Like the humanoids, it darkly hints at making unhappiness illegal and coercing man into bliss. Joe Haldeman’s (a fan of at least Gunn’s The Listeners) Buying Time may have been influenced by the first story. Like his immortality sellers in that novel, Hedonics Inc charges a man his entire worth for happiness.

While Gunn’s The Immortals had health as its prime concern, that is only a small part of Hedonics work. In the second story, the Hedonic dream sours. This story shows the science, philosophy, and workings of Hedonics. The philosophy is two pronged: reduced desire (substituting one desire for another, devaluing the desire, projecting the desire on someone else, suppressing the desire) and increased satisfaction (modifying the external world or substituting one good for another). There are also the paths to imaginary gratification. The Hedonist hero of this action-filled second part of the novel is a master at applying his techniques. Unfortunately, he discovers his colleagues are not so ethical or unselfishness. They, under the weight of providing happiness for more and more people, have abandoned the road to rational happiness. They can’t modify the world so they give the masses under their centralized, technocratic control the pleasures of imaginary gratification: drugs and induced hallucinations. They regard happiness as a reward they dispense to the obedient, not a right. Eventually, the Hedonist goes to Venus – colony world of the discontented, home of men unhappy to accomplish, a world too poor to have the elaborate Hedonics of Earth (here the world must be modified, things built, to survive – imaginary gratification, reduced desire, substitution are not options). Here Gunn makes the link between accomplishment and unhappiness that is the central theme of the third part.

Under the Hedonist Morgan’s influence (protagonist of the second story in the novel) Venus has developed Hedonics but of a more pragmatic sort though it is still is unlawful for a man to be unhappy. The plot involves the Hedonic Council of Earth sending mechanical duplicates of colonists to seduce them into accepting the happiness imposed on Earth. This and the romance on Earth between D’glas and Susan are sidelights to the real philosophical discussions. (It’s also implausible that Venus never contacted any other planetary colonies by radio.) D’glas finds an Earth populated by bloated bodies in artificial wombs, living a pre-natal existence of simple desires. Even the head Hedonicists have retreated to the womb and left a computer in charge. This computer tries to coerce Susan and D’glas into wombs by pleasant illusions, terror, and seduction. (He succeeds with Susan. The computer can only act coercively when it diagnoses unhappiness.) The computer is defeated though and the philosophical meaning of the novel is pounded memorably home: “The ultimate happiness is death.” Only there is every whim satisfied . Not just in physical but the social and spiritual death of the womb.

I think Gunn’s point is two-fold. First, anything, even the pursuit and attainment of happiness, is dangerous in the extreme. D’glas’ Venus is hedonic, but there it is a philosophy, not a technocratic application of tyranny. (Morgan’s book is called “The Rise and Fall of Applied Hedonics”). Here, then, is another utopian ideal gone very (but not murderously – at least physically) wrong. Second, is the obvious point that dissatisfaction and discontent are vital to the human condition, integral to man’s improvement and spiritual survival. ( )