Frederik Pohl

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
This article is about the writer and editor. For the historian, see Frederick J. Pohl.
Frederik Pohl
Pseudonym: Elton Andrews
Born: November 26, 1919 (age 87)
Occupation: Novelist, short story author, Essayist, Publisher, Editor, Literary Agent
Nationality: USA
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 a noted American science fiction writer and editor, 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 running. His writing also won him three Hugos and multiple Nebula Awards. He became a Nebula Grand Master in 1993. For a time he was the official authority for the Encyclopedia Britannica on the subject of Emperor Tiberius.

Contents

[edit] Biography and writing career

Pohl's early years were spent in a number of places. 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 7, Pohl and his family settled in Brooklyn. He attended the prestigious high school Brooklyn Tech and formed a lifelong friendship with fellow writer Isaac Asimov who also lived in Brooklyn. Pohl dropped out of school at the age of fourteen to find work due to the Great Depression.

In 1936 Pohl joined the Communist Party. However, party elders expelled him, in the belief that the escapist nature of science fiction risked corrupting the minds of youth. Like Asimov, he was a member of the New York based Futurians fan group.

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 fellow 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 was a friend and collaborator with 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 is not to be confused with "The Merchants of Venus", an unconnected 1972 novella where the Heechee were first introduced and which also includes biting satire on runaway free market capitalism.

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 editorship if won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Magazine for 1966, 1967 and 1968 [1].

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 novel in the Heechee series, in 1977. Gateway also won the 1978 best-novel Hugo. Two of his stories have also earned him Hugo awards: "The Meeting" (with Kornbluth) was a tie in 1973 and "Fermi and Frost" won in 1986. Another notable late novel of his 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.

[edit] Works

[edit] Series

  • Heechee:
    • The Merchants of Venus (1972) (novella in The Gold at the Starbow's End)
    • Gateway (1976) (winner of the Hugo Award and Nebula Award)
    • Beyond the Blue Event Horizon (1980)
    • Heechee Rendezvous (1985)
    • Annals of the Heechee (1987)
    • The Gateway Trip (1990)
    • The Boy Who Would Live Forever: A Novel of Gateway (2004)
  • Eschaton:
    • The Other End of Time (1996)
    • The Siege of Eternity (1997)
    • The Far Shore of Time (1999)

[edit] Other novels (not part of a series)

  • Search the Sky (1954) (with Cyril M. Kornbluth)
  • Gladiator at Law (1955) (with Cyril M. Kornbluth)
  • Preferred Risk (1955) (with Lester Del Rey)
  • Slave Ship (1956)
  • Wolfbane (1957) (with Cyril M. Kornbluth)
  • Presidential Year (1958) (with Cyril M. Kornbluth)
  • Drunkard's Walk (1960)
  • A Plague of Pythons (1964) (also called Demon in the Skull)
  • The Age of the Pussyfoot (1965)
  • Jem (1980)
  • The Cool War (1981)
  • Syzygy (1981)
  • Starburst (1982)
  • The Years of the City (1984)
  • Black Star Rising (1985)
  • The Coming of the Quantum Cats (1986)
  • Terror (1986)
  • Chernobyl (1987)
  • Land's End (1988) (with Jack Williamson)
  • The Day The Martians Came (1988)
  • Narabedla Ltd. (1988)
  • Homegoing (1989)
  • The World at the End of Time (1990)
  • Outnumbering the Dead (1990)
  • Stopping at Slowyear (1991)
  • The Singers of Time (1991) (with Jack Wiliamson)
  • Mining the Oort (1992)
  • The Voices of Heaven (1994)
  • O Pioneer! (1998)

[edit] Collections

  • Alternating Currents (1956)
  • The Case Against Tomorrow (1957)
  • Tomorrow Times Seven (1959)
  • The Man Who Ate the World (1960)
  • Turn Left At Thursday (1961)
  • The Wonder Effect (1962) (with Cyril M. Kornbluth)
  • The Abominable Earthman (1963)
  • Digits and Dastards (1966)
  • The Frederik Pohl Omnibus (1966)
  • Day Million (1970)
  • The Best of Frederik Pohl (1975)
  • In The Problem Pit (1976)
  • The Early Pohl (1976):
    • 'Elegy for a Dead Planet: Luna,' 1937, (writing as Elton Andrews) [a poem, his first published piece]
    • 'The Dweller in the Ice,' 1940, (writing as James MacCreigh)
    • 'The King's Eye,' 1940, (writing as James MacCreigh)
    • 'It's a Young World,' 1940, (writing as James MacCreigh)
    • 'Daughters of Eternity,' 1940, (writing as James MacCreigh)
    • 'Earth, Farewell!,' 1940, (writing as James MacCreigh)
    • 'Conspiracy on Callisto,' 1943, (writing as James MacCreigh)
    • 'Highwayman of the Void,' 1943, (writing under Dirk Wylie's name)
    • 'Double-Cross,' 1943, (writing as James MacCreigh)
  • Survival Kit (1979)
  • This Is My Best (1981)
  • Planets Three, 1982 (a collection of 3 novellas written as James MacCreigh):
    • 'Figurehead'
    • 'Red Moon of Danger'
    • 'Donovan Had a Dream'
  • Midas World (1983)
  • Pohlstars (1984)
  • BiPohl (1987)
  • Our Best: The Best of Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth (1987) (with C.M. Kornbluth)
  • Platinum Pohl (2005)

[edit] Autobiography

  • The Way the Future Was (1978)

[edit] Non-fiction

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

[edit] References

  1. ^ Frederik Pohl: Chasing Science (October 2000), Locus Online, http://www.locusmag.com/2000/Issues/10/Pohl.html

[edit] External links

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
PLACE OF BIRTH
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../f/r/e/Frederik_Pohl_31b2.html"