Fafnir (Jun 2019)
“The Mindworm”: C. M. Kornbluth’s Post-War American Vampire Tale at the Dawn of the Atomic Age
Abstract
Through a close reading of C. M. Kornbluth’s “The Mindworm” (1950), this paper focuses on the socioeconomic and political anxieties of postwar America including: fears of uncontrolled technological development (nuclear weapons), pathologies of consumerism (material affluence), and the McCarthyite suppression of dissent (the second Red Scare and government surveillance) to reveal the author’s significantly veiled anti-authoritarian message. Published during the height of revived anti-Communist hysteria, Kornbluth’s story challenges the legitimacy of American values of the 1950s, including consumerism, patriotism and conformity. A reworking of the traditional science-fiction narrative where the enemy represents the fear of the Other (i.e. Communists), Kornbluth’s story exposes the real threat to American democracy: the American government’s suppression of its citizens’ rights.
