Frederik Pohl

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This article is about the writer and editor. For the historian, see Frederick J. Pohl.
Frederik Pohl
Pseudonym: Elton Andrews
Born November 26, 1919 (1919-11-26) (age 88)
Occupation Novelist, short story author, Essayist, Publisher, Editor, Literary Agent
Nationality U.S.
Genres Science fiction
Debut works "Elegy to a Dead Planet: Luna" (1937)
Website www.frederikpohl.com

Frederik George Pohl, Jr. (born November 26, 1919) is an influential American science fiction writer, editor and fan, with a career spanning over sixty years. From about 1959 until 1969, Pohl edited Galaxy magazine and its sister magazine if, winning the Hugo for if three years in a row. His writing also won him three Hugos and multiple Nebula Awards. He became a Nebula Grand Master in 1993.

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Pohl's early years were spent moving around. His father held a number of jobs, and the Pohls lived in such wide-flung locations as Texas, California, New Mexico, and the Panama Canal Zone. Around age seven, they settled in Brooklyn. He attended the prestigious Brooklyn Tech high school, where he formed a lifelong friendship with fellow writer Isaac Asimov. With Asimov, he was a member of the New York-based Futurians fan group. Due to the Great Depression, Pohl dropped out of school at the age of fourteen to work.

In 1936, Pohl joined the Young Communist League, an organization in favor of trade unions and against racial prejudice and Hitler and Mussolini. Some say that party elders expelled him, in the belief that the escapist nature of science fiction risked corrupting the minds of youth; he says that after Stalin-Hitler pact in 1939 the party line changed and he could no longer support it, so he left.

From 1939 to 1943, he was the editor of two pulp magazines - Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories.[1]

Pohl has been married several times. His first wife was another Futurian, Leslie Perri. In the 1950s he was married to Judith Merril, an important figure in the world of science fiction, with whom he has one daughter. He is currently married to science fiction editor and academic Elizabeth Anne Hull, PhD.

He collaborated with friend and fellow Futurian Cyril M. Kornbluth, co-authoring a number of short stories and several novels, including a dystopian satire of a world ruled by the advertising agencies, The Space Merchants (a belated sequel, The Merchants' War [1984] was written by Pohl alone, after Kornbluth's death). This should not to be confused with "The Merchants of Venus", an unconnected 1972 novella which includes biting satire on runaway free market capitalism and first introduced the Heechee.

A number of his short stories were notable for a satirical look at consumerism and advertising in the 1950s and 1960s: "The Wizard of Pung's Corners", where flashy, overcomplex military hardware prove useless against farmers with shotguns, and "The Tunnel Under the World", where an entire community is held captive by advertising researchers.

From the late 1950s until 1969, he served as editor of Galaxy and if magazines, taking over at some point from the ailing H. L. Gold. Under his leadership, if won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Magazine for 1966, 1967 and 1968.[2]

In the mid-1970s, Pohl acquired and edited novels for Bantam Books, published as "Frederik Pohl Selections"; the most notable were Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren and Joanna Russ's The Female Man. Also in the 1970s, Pohl reemerged as a novel writer in his own right, with books such as Man Plus and the Heechee series. He won back-to-back Nebula awards with Man Plus in 1976 and Gateway, the first Heechee novel, in 1977. Gateway also won the 1978 Hugo Award for Best Novel. Two of his stories have also earned him Hugo awards: "The Meeting" (with Kornbluth) tied in 1973 and "Fermi and Frost" won in 1986. Another notable late novel is Jem (1980), winner of the National Book Award. Pohl continues to write and had a new story, "Generations", published in September 2005. As of November 2006, he was working on a novel begun by Arthur C. Clarke with the provisional title "The Last Theorem".

His works include not only science fiction but also articles for Playboy and Family Circle. For a time, he was the official authority for the Encyclopedia Britannica on the subject of Emperor Tiberius.

  1. Undersea Quest (1954)
  2. Undersea Fleet (1956)
  3. Undersea City (1958)

  1. Gateway (1976) (winner of the Hugo Award and Nebula Award)
  2. Beyond the Blue Event Horizon (1980)
  3. Heechee Rendezvous (1985)
  4. Annals of the Heechee (1987)
  5. The Gateway Trip (1990)
  • The Boy Who Would Live Forever: A Novel of Gateway (2004)

  1. The Other End of Time (1996)
  2. The Siege of Eternity (1997)
  3. The Far Shore of Time (1999)

  1. Farthest Star (1975)
  2. Wall Around A Star (1983)


  1. The Reefs of Space (1964)
  2. Starchild (1965)
  3. Rogue Star (1969)

  1. The Space Merchants (1953) (with Cyril M. Kornbluth)
  2. The Merchants' War (1984) (published together with The Space Merchants under the title VENUS, INC.)

  • The Way the Future Was (1978)

  • Tiberius (1960) (writing as Ernst Mason)
  • Practical Politics 1972 (1971)
  • Our Angry Earth (1991) (with Isaac Asimov)
  • Chasing Science: Science as Spectator Sport (2000)

  1. ^ Frederik Pohl: Chasing Science. Locus Online (October 2000).
  2. ^ The Hugo Awards by Category. worldcon.


Persondata
NAME Pohl, Frederik
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Andrews, Elton
SHORT DESCRIPTION American novelist, short story author, essayist, publisher, editor, and literary agent
DATE OF BIRTH November 26, 1919 (1919-11-26) (age 88)
PLACE OF BIRTH
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH
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