Preferred Risk

By: Frederik Pohl, Lester del Rey

Narrated by: Mark Douglas Nelson

Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

The Company was a powerful, efficient, and monstrous insurance organization that controlled the entire world, scientifically regulating everything in life: war, epidemics, one-a-day food pills and test-tube sex...all through the use of its patented, terrifying human deep-freeze vault.

Claims Adjuster Wills, a great believer in the Company, begins to have second thoughts when he meets beautiful and sorrowful Rena, whose radical father lies in a frozen subterranean vault.

©2008 Wonder Audiobooks (P)2008 Wonder Audiobooks

Is your apocalyptic insurance policy up-to-date?

I liked the different twist on the end of the world. The insurance industry to the extreme

One of my favorites from Pohl, terrible narrator

Not sure how much of this story and the writing is Pohl and how much is Del Rey, but it's still one of my favorites. It's the kind of satire of American life that you'd expect if you're familiar with either writer, this time specifically of the military industrial complex, and it's a darkly funny book. Don't expect a lot of subtlety and deeply coded symbolism; the MC starts out almost hopelessly naive, and through him you're meant to laugh at your own naivete.

However, this narrator is probably one of the worst I've ever heard. His narrating voice is robotic and the production is marked by distracting audio quality issues. His accents and voices for various characters are inconsistent, carry over to other characters and narration, and the accents themselves are distractingly bad.

Another prescient story....

....from the great sci fi writers of the past. If I'd listened to this five years ago, I would have thought it was a bit of a stretch. Now, it sounds like tomorrow's news.

World government by an insurance company

Preferred Risk by the writing duo of Frederik Pohl and Lester del Rey is a 50's era tongue-in-cheek vision where the threat of nuclear war and all the attendant cold war geopolitical machinations have been neutralized by a giant insurance company taking over global governance and controlling everything by addressing all sorts of 'risks.' An innocent claim adjuster is brought in for a recently limited nuclear exchange and finds himself in the middle of an insurgency while at the same time, he learns that not all is what is seems on the company side.

Preferred Risk is your basic new world order gone awry where a 1984-style society has been established, in this case by an insurance company. Exactly how this has occurred is never outlined other than the company's approach to addressing risks comprehensively is viewed positively. Nuclear annihilation and radiation fallout are prominent threats. There is also cryopreservation of humans for medical purposes, but this is abused. In the end, this is your standard megalomaniacal nutjob trying to take over the world.

The narration is fine with reasonable character distinction. This is a short listen and moves briskly.

I IISTENED WITH ONLY HALF MY MIND

I am a big fan of Pohl and would give him five stars for several books, including Gateway, The Space Merchants, Starbust, Jem, The Voice of Heaven, etc. This book was very slow and hard to get in to. The narrator was no help. This follows in line with his idea of large corporations taking over the world. In the case it is insurance companies. I like how he explains how people can be brainwashed from birth. The company tells them they have eradicated war, yet there are wars, they have eradicated disease, yet the main character's wife dies of disease and still he believes in the company. We can see examples of this in today's world and perhaps it was going on in Pohl's time. If this opens anybody's eyes that is great, but as a story it was just to boring. Get Space Merchants, it is a similar theme and is entertaining.