Frederik Pohl (1919–2013)

This is a memoir by Fred Pohl, one of the guiding influences of 20th century science fiction, published in 1979. Although he had success with his writing, his chief influence, certainly from this book, is in his editing of various magazines and his role in helping to promote a large number of the famous names of SF.

The first chapters deal with his childhood, discovery of science fiction at a young age and involvement in what eventually became science fiction fandom. The author writes about the Depression, the various editors and how he became an editor himself, for little money, at the age of nineteen. There are also anecdotes about John W Campbell, the famous editor of Astounding Science Fiction (and also the fantasy magazine, Unknown, although strangely that isn't mentioned at all from my recollection).

Interestingly, he also tells of how he was drawn into an organisation of young Communists. Eventually he parted company from them in disgust at how they changed from being anti-fascist to supporting Nazi Germany just because Stalin had signed a pact with Hitler. I fully expected him to later describe how he was hauled in front of the Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s but he actually says very little on the subject. Perhaps they were only interested in film writers?

Pohl joined the army in 1943 during WWII. While still in basic training in the States, he had requested his mother to send his portable typewriter to him. Shortly after being posted to a weather unit in Italy, he learned that she was ill. She had for all intents and purposes been a single parent, since his father was always off working somewhere but often on get-rich-quick schemes which would have worked out if he hadn't been tempted to invest in yet one more and subsequently lost everything. So I would have expected he and his mother to be close. He tried to find the Red Cross man for permission to send a telegram and maybe even get compassionate leave back to the States but then heard that his mother had died. He is curiously unemotional about this. He just found a quiet place to work on his typewriter and started a novel about life in New York.

Back in civvy street, he became an advertising copywriter while continuing to write SF short stories on the side. He also began helping his childhood friend, Dirk Wylie, who had set up a literary agency since he couldn't manage more strenuous work. Dirk had received a life threatening back injury in the war, from which he eventually died. Pohl carried on helping Dirk's widow run the agency and eventually took it over. By this time, book publishers were beginning to publish science fiction, creating a market for both reprints of serialised novels and novels written especially for book publication. One of the best of these was Ian Ballantine, founder of Ballantine Books, who Pohl worked with closely. Eventually, Pohl resigned his copywriting job to become a full-time agent. He represented many of the top writers of the period but after seven years somehow ended up going bust with thirty thousand dollars of debt which he eventually paid off over a number of years.

One of the interests of this book for me were all the cameo appearance of 'Golden Age' writers whose work I had come across in anthology reprints years ago, such as Fletcher Pratt, Henry Kuttner, Pohl's close friend Cyril Kornbluth, L Sprague de Camp and others. The more famous writers such as Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein also make cameo appearances.

There are interesting insights into the world of magazines both before WWII and afterwards, including the attitudes of those who owned them and the lengths editors had to go to in order to try to keep them afloat and to pay the writers a half-decent amount. The editors themselves were low paid. A lot of the stories were poor, mainly due to the poor pay rates. WWII paper shortages, plus the collapse of a major distributor which a speculator acquired cheaply to wind them up and sell off their large holding of property, put a lot of magazines out of business in the 50s. He had long been selling stories to Galaxy, one of the leaders of the field which managed to survive the collapse, but as the editor Horace Gold became ill, Pohl was drafted in to cover for him temporarily and ended up staying on as editor for nine years.

A main thread later in the book is the various marriages and relationships he and others in the SF community formed, a feature being that people divorced and then married someone else's other half. Even by WWII he had already been married twice, both marriages ending amicably after a couple of years. But his third marriage was to Judith Merrill, who I knew of chiefly as an editor of science fiction, but not about their marriage. Their breakup was not amicable, due to a custody battle over their daughter. Soon afterwards, he married again and by the end of the book was already heading towards yet another divorce.

Some out-of-date attitudes are on show. At one point, he mentions he has been 'liberated' and is aware of women's equality etc, yet later on refers to the average writer's spouse having issues with 'his' behaviour. ("Writing is the only job I know that your wife will nag you out of.... and more in the same vein, though he had favourable things to say about particular women writers.) There are a few references to gay men which come across as disapproving though possibly weren't meant as such; one reference early on to a "predatory" homosexual (the context being one which today's writers and readers would clearly differentiate as nothing to do with being gay but being the behaviour of a paedophile). There's also a mention of someone in the then-all-male fandom making an approach to someone and being 'greeted with such revulsion and horror that he cravenly crept back into line' though the author is quick to say he wasn't present. And there is one section where words unacceptable now are used, although it is in the context of saying how he was born a WASP and therefore not disadvantaged in the way these various groups were.

The book becomes a bit meandering towards the end. From discussion of his involvement on a long running radio chat show, he moves on to ESP and UFOs and how he looked into the bona fides of both. There's a discussion of the history of the Milford SF writing workshop, the illness suffered by his and Carol's (wife number 3) daughter, and the death of his friend Cyril Kornbluth, again of WWII complications. The book ends on a down-note, with various friends dying, relationships severed and his marriage becoming adrift. He was turning fifty and a trip to Japan was a high point, but he then became depressed as they moved on to Hawaii and then Los Angeles. Only science fiction had remained the constant love of his life.

An interesting book on the whole but a bit disjointed in places. Sometimes he shot ahead to later developments, then went back only to deal with the subject again later on. This made things a bit confusing, for example, a reference to the Hydra Club before reaching the part of the memoir where that was explained. As mentioned above, the ending is a bit of a damp squib. But there was enough interest to make this a 3 star rating for me.… (mer)

Collection of SF stories published in 1973 by Carol and Frederik Pohl. Intro by Issac Asimov. Some stories are pure fantasy and others try to deal with the insane physics of the planet itself. Early SF on a tough subject. Not bad.

Bridge James Blish
Victory Unintentional Isaac Asimov
Desertion Clifford D. Simak
The Mad Moon Stanley G. Weinbaum
Heavyplanet Milton A. Rothman
The Lotus-Engine Raymond Z. Gallun
Call Me Joe Poul Anderson
Habit Lester del Rey
A Meeting With Medusa Arthur C. Clarke… (mer)

A very prescient sci-fi novel that essentially predicts the rise of smartphones, no kidding.

It deals with the discovery of a hyperspace network developed by a race of precursor aliens. Its strength is that it's very character-driven - it is mostly told in flashback by the main character in counselling sessions with a sarcastic robot. There are pages that are supposed "realia", helping to flesh out the world. The story is drip-fed to you, slowly foreshadowing the twists at the end when everything comes together, and I liked that.

The hyperspace ships left by the aliens only travel to preprogrammed locations, meaning that every trip is a gamble - will they have enough fuel or food for the journey? where will they end up? will they be able to profit? (since the future world is apparently the worst excesses of capitalism on steroids) - and even then crewmembers have to travel in close quarters for months, making it an emotional toll. Given all that, a lot of what happens in the story is unsurprising.

Some of the revelations aren't so savoury - the m.c. turns out to be a violent closet case, and beats up his girlfriend. But the book reveals this while being careful to condemn his actions and make the story one of guilt. The final revelation that he left his girlfriend to be sucked into a black hole - meaning it's his guilt that she is, due to time dilation still in that situation and will be long after he dies, and he has no way to tell her it wasn't actually his fault - cements that. Unreliable Narrator is handled well, basically.

And yeah, for 1977 the future predictions are astounding honestly. Pohl never quite accurately predicts the internet, for example, but capitalism has been going the way of this book for decades, and the book's p-phones are basically smartphones.… (mer)