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Bipohl
Good to Very Good condition. Strong spine with creasing. Bright clean cover has light creasing and edge wear. Small corner on front of cover has been removed. Text is perfect. Same day shipping first class.
- GenresScience Fiction
313 pages, Paperback
First published February 12, 1982
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About the author
Frederik Pohl
1,152 books1,068 followersFrederik George Pohl, Jr. was an American science fiction writer, editor and fan, with a career spanning over seventy 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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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 10, 2017
Two shorter novels in one! I haven't many of Frederik Pohl's stories, which is sort of a feat in itself given that he wrote sf for over seventy-five years. "The Tunnel Under the World" and the first part of the serial "Gladiator-at-Law" (written in collaboration with C. M. Kornbluth) were quite good, and interesting explorations of certain satirical themes. Pohl is definitely one of those "classic" sf authors with a strong prognostication sense: he may not get the details of the future correct, but he seems surprisingly prescient about the tone of the future.
Witness The Age of the Pussyfoot. Originally published in serial form in 1966, Pohl cleverly extrapolates shiny-and-new elements of that era (organ transplants, time-sharing computers, and almost certainly the new wave of teenage counter-culture) into elements of the future. So in the year 2527 everyone has portable computing devices that read messages, conduct monetary transactions, relay knowledge from a vast central repository, and dispense a variety of customized pharmaceuticals. Other than the drugs on demand, that's amazingly close to smartphone tech; only the "joymakers" of the story are cylindrical thingies and not glass-and-aluminum screens.
The story itself is about a guy who gets cryonically preserved in the Sixties and wakes up in the future. (Cryonics, incidentally, is still in the "maybe" column.) It's pretty transparently an odyssey through Pohl's world, as our protagonist stubbornly refuses to accept the new reality and generally goes around yelling "what's the big idea!" (sort of like L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt's "Compleat Enchanter" but less annoying) and getting in trouble just because he keeps refusing to hear his messages. Also there are space aliens, which seemed like a needless addition, or else a shoehorned villain. Overall I'd give it ★★★ or ★★★½, worth reading for the interesting future-world-building, but weak in the story department.
Second is Drunkard's Walk, originally published as a serial in 1960. This is a vintage mid-century sf story: overcrowded future world, conspiracies, psi phenomena. In fact the actual story (once it kicks into high gear) is pure Alex-Jones-level craziness. The writing is a bit uneven up until then; the story has early moments of absurdity that made me think "satire," until it dove straight into a conspiracy-thriller and lost all (intentional) silliness. And while the civilization of 2196 still uses magnetic tapes and CRT televisions, lectures at the University are video-recorded and televised―not a whole-cloth prediction, as this was already done sporadically as far backs as the Thirties, but still interesting speculation in light of educational programming on YouTube, which is closer to the graphics-heavy style that Pohl describes. Overall I'd give this a ★★½, solid, but not exceptional among the mass of Sixties sf serials.
OVERALL: ★★★. Pohl is one of the sf grandmasters for good reason, and it's worth reading at least some of his work. I'd suggest Age of the Pussyfoot for the worldbuilding.
Witness The Age of the Pussyfoot. Originally published in serial form in 1966, Pohl cleverly extrapolates shiny-and-new elements of that era (organ transplants, time-sharing computers, and almost certainly the new wave of teenage counter-culture) into elements of the future. So in the year 2527 everyone has portable computing devices that read messages, conduct monetary transactions, relay knowledge from a vast central repository, and dispense a variety of customized pharmaceuticals. Other than the drugs on demand, that's amazingly close to smartphone tech; only the "joymakers" of the story are cylindrical thingies and not glass-and-aluminum screens.
The story itself is about a guy who gets cryonically preserved in the Sixties and wakes up in the future. (Cryonics, incidentally, is still in the "maybe" column.) It's pretty transparently an odyssey through Pohl's world, as our protagonist stubbornly refuses to accept the new reality and generally goes around yelling "what's the big idea!" (sort of like L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt's "Compleat Enchanter" but less annoying) and getting in trouble just because he keeps refusing to hear his messages. Also there are space aliens, which seemed like a needless addition, or else a shoehorned villain. Overall I'd give it ★★★ or ★★★½, worth reading for the interesting future-world-building, but weak in the story department.
Second is Drunkard's Walk, originally published as a serial in 1960. This is a vintage mid-century sf story: overcrowded future world, conspiracies, psi phenomena. In fact the actual story (once it kicks into high gear) is pure Alex-Jones-level craziness. The writing is a bit uneven up until then; the story has early moments of absurdity that made me think "satire," until it dove straight into a conspiracy-thriller and lost all (intentional) silliness. And while the civilization of 2196 still uses magnetic tapes and CRT televisions, lectures at the University are video-recorded and televised―not a whole-cloth prediction, as this was already done sporadically as far backs as the Thirties, but still interesting speculation in light of educational programming on YouTube, which is closer to the graphics-heavy style that Pohl describes. Overall I'd give this a ★★½, solid, but not exceptional among the mass of Sixties sf serials.
OVERALL: ★★★. Pohl is one of the sf grandmasters for good reason, and it's worth reading at least some of his work. I'd suggest Age of the Pussyfoot for the worldbuilding.
April 14, 2013
This 1982 compilation includes The Age of the Pussyfoot (1965) and an extended version of Drunkard's Walk (1960). Pussyfoot, as mentioned in some of my other reviews, examines how society might change over 500 years. The protagonist tries to bluff his way through rules and mores that he doesn't understand, but ends up redeeming himself in the end.
I only vaguely remembered the premise of Drunkard's Walk after reading it 30 years ago. This time around, the "string-pulling" of those who considered themselves The Next Step Forward added to the mystery. Unlike John Brunner's Players at the Game of People, Pohl is kind enough to let us know What's Actually Going On.
Feb. 24, 2013.
I only vaguely remembered the premise of Drunkard's Walk after reading it 30 years ago. This time around, the "string-pulling" of those who considered themselves The Next Step Forward added to the mystery. Unlike John Brunner's Players at the Game of People, Pohl is kind enough to let us know What's Actually Going On.
Feb. 24, 2013.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews