Pohl
(Thought I had posted this a couple of days ago.)
American science fiction has lost an irreplaceable treasure with Frederik Pohl's death. He did everything – author, collaborator, editor, anthologist, critic, agent, SFWA leader – and he did it all well.
His perception as an editor changed the course of American sf in the sixties and seventies, with his selection and sponsorship of ground-breaking works such as Dhalgren and The Female Man.
I first met Pohl at my first Worldcon, Washington D.C., in 1963. I'd just read Wolfbane and was impressed and intimidated. (All I'd written at the time was some juvenilia -- can someone use that term about his own writing? -- printed in my brother's fanzine Tapeworm.) Pohl was a huge presence to me for years, one of the immortals out of science fiction's misty pulpy past.
He bought my first story, sort of. Before he retired from Galaxy magazine in 1969, he wrote back a note, literally the size of a postage stamp, when he returned a story of mine, saying "If you can boil down the first four pages into one, I'll look at this again." (I did, but by that time Pohl had moved on; his successor bought the story.)
That was not the only time Fred changed my life with a small gesture. We happened to be sitting together at a meeting of the Science Fiction Writers of America, when the chairman announced that the SFWA treasurer was retiring, and asked for volunteers. Fred grabbed my arm and thrust it up, which began my five-year incarceration as a SFWA officer.
Central Casting could have chosen Fred as a pulp writer of the thirties, forties, and fifties. Lanky and careful, slow-moving, thoughtful. A dark ironic sense of humor, quick sharp eyes and tongue. Heavy smoker for most of his life and never too far from a glass, though never obviously intoxicated.
He lost the use of his right arm six or seven years ago, but taught himself to type as a leftie, and stayed in the game. His last book, All the Lives He Led, came out a little over a year ago.
For all those many lives Fred did lead, he did an amazing job. We'll never see his like again.
Joe
American science fiction has lost an irreplaceable treasure with Frederik Pohl's death. He did everything – author, collaborator, editor, anthologist, critic, agent, SFWA leader – and he did it all well.
His perception as an editor changed the course of American sf in the sixties and seventies, with his selection and sponsorship of ground-breaking works such as Dhalgren and The Female Man.
I first met Pohl at my first Worldcon, Washington D.C., in 1963. I'd just read Wolfbane and was impressed and intimidated. (All I'd written at the time was some juvenilia -- can someone use that term about his own writing? -- printed in my brother's fanzine Tapeworm.) Pohl was a huge presence to me for years, one of the immortals out of science fiction's misty pulpy past.
He bought my first story, sort of. Before he retired from Galaxy magazine in 1969, he wrote back a note, literally the size of a postage stamp, when he returned a story of mine, saying "If you can boil down the first four pages into one, I'll look at this again." (I did, but by that time Pohl had moved on; his successor bought the story.)
That was not the only time Fred changed my life with a small gesture. We happened to be sitting together at a meeting of the Science Fiction Writers of America, when the chairman announced that the SFWA treasurer was retiring, and asked for volunteers. Fred grabbed my arm and thrust it up, which began my five-year incarceration as a SFWA officer.
Central Casting could have chosen Fred as a pulp writer of the thirties, forties, and fifties. Lanky and careful, slow-moving, thoughtful. A dark ironic sense of humor, quick sharp eyes and tongue. Heavy smoker for most of his life and never too far from a glass, though never obviously intoxicated.
He lost the use of his right arm six or seven years ago, but taught himself to type as a leftie, and stayed in the game. His last book, All the Lives He Led, came out a little over a year ago.
For all those many lives Fred did lead, he did an amazing job. We'll never see his like again.
Joe
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