The joy makers

the long version

The three parts of James Gunn's fix-up novel The Joy Makers (1961) were originally published in magazine form in 1955 as 'Name Your Pleasure,' 'The Naked Sky', and 'The Unhappy Man.' I have not read the originals so I'm unsure of how much was added or subtracted or completely re-conceptualized. Largely a satire -- Gunn pushes his point to the logical, and terrifying extreme -- each part is a further chronological progression of a society whose chief aim is to make people happy. It is hard not to read Part I as a satirical take on some aspects of Scientology, a movement that was gaining force in the early 1950s.