Cyril M. was quite the visionary, a pity he died so young. The novella itself is all too little read these days, though the theme of a degraded and culturally-inbred society permeates much of his other work, including "The Little Black Bag" which was at least turned into film...albeit, ironically, in a degraded and culturally-inbred way more acceptable to Liberal sensibilities than the real backstory on why the bag of idiot-proof super-medical instruments existed in the first place.
I never saw the movie. The story is great, though. But how could the movie subtract out the reason for the infallibility and idiot-proofness of the instruments? Just by ignoring, entirely, the problem of the huge majority of low-IQ breeders and having the bag travel back in time? That puts me in mind of "Blade Runner," which completely ignores Mercerism, Deckard's actual, more everyman/loser-like character, the fact that one of Dick's main points is that the andies LACK all empathy, which the movie turns 180 degress, and cuts out the great false police station section of the novel. If you've read "Do Androids..", then it's really hard to see "Blade Runner" as very good, although it's not bad on its own terms. I'm assuming this adaptation of "Little Black Bag" sucks on even its own terms.
Even what a lesser writer would have allowed to be a "necessary" weak point--how Gillis the "physicist" accidentally creates a time-travel device--Kornbluth brings full circle for an explanation consistent with an explanation of how the instruments can possibly work, and how the biological contents of the bag never run out.
