Frederik Pohl

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Frederik Pohl (2008)

Frederik George Pohl, Jr. (* 26. November 1919 in New York City ; † 2 September 2013 in Palatine , Illinois ) was an American science fiction - author and editor.

life and work

Pohl was born in Brooklyn , NYC in 1919 . He had to move several times at a young age. His father worked in various positions, so Pohl lived in Texas , California , New Mexico and near the Panama Canal . When Pohl was about seven years old, the family moved back to Brooklyn. He attended the well respected Brooklyn Technical High School, but had during the Great Depression at fourteen out of school to go to work. During his teenage years, he made a lifelong friendship with Isaac Asimov , who, like him, was a member of the New York science fiction fan group the Futurians .

In 1936, Pohl joined a communist group called the Young Communist League and later became chairman of the local group in Brooklyn. It is sometimes alleged that the group chairmen pushed him out of the group because they feared that science fiction would spoil the youth. Pohl himself said that he could no longer support the party line after the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939 and therefore left voluntarily.

His first text, a poem, appeared in 1937 in the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories under the pseudonym Elton V. Andrews .

From 1939 to 1943 Pohl was the editor of two pulp magazines - the Astonishing Stories and the Super Science Stories . In his biography, however, Pohl writes that he stopped working around the time of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.

From April 1943 to November 1945, Pohl served as a meteorologist in the US Army and was promoted to sergeant . After training in Illinois , Oklahoma and Colorado , he was mainly stationed in Italy .

Pohl began his career as a bookseller and agent in 1937, but it was only a part-time job until he worked full-time in this trade after the war. He summed up that he probably “sold more than half of all successful science fiction authors” (“representing more than half the successful writers in science fiction”). For a short while he was the only agent Asimov ever had. In the early 1950s, however, his company went bankrupt.

He then worked with his friend Cyril M. Kornbluth (also a member of the Futurians) on various short stories and novels. Among them was a novel about a world ruled by advertising companies, The Space Merchants ( Pohl wrote the related novel The Merchants' War alone, as Kornbluth had since passed away). This novel is not to be confused with Pohl's The Merchants of Venus from 1972, which criticizes turbo-capitalism and for the first time introduces the Hitschi, which still play a role in the Gateway trilogy .

A number of Pohl's short stories take a satirical look at consumer behavior and advertising in the 1950s and 1960s: The Wizard of Pung's Corners is about complex military hardware that is defenseless against farmers with shotguns. In The Tunnel Under the World , an entire village is held captive for market research purposes.

From the late 1950s to 1969, Pohl was the editor of Galaxy and If magazines . Under his direction, If won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Magazine in 1966, 1967 and 1968. Judy-Lynn del Rey was his assistant on both magazines.

In the mid-1970s, Pohl bought and edited novels for Bantam Books , which were published under the title Frederik Pohl Selections . The best known were Samuel R. Delanys Dhalgren and The Female Man by Joanna Russ . Around the same time, Pohl also wrote books himself, such as Man Plus and the books in the Gateway series. He won the Nebula Award for Man Plus (1976), and again the following year with the first Gateway novel Gateway (1977). Gateway also won the Hugo Award, the Locus Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1978, and thus combined all the major genre prizes. Two of his short stories were also successful: The Meeting (with Cyril M. Kornbluth) won the Hugo Award in 1973, and another Hugo was won by Fermi and Frost in 1986. Another notable novel is Jem , which won the National Book Award .

In September 2005 Pohl published the novel Generations . Since November 2006 he has been working on a novel begun by Arthur C. Clarke . This book, entitled The Last Theorem , was published in 2008, a few months after Arthur C. Clarke's death.

Pohl's works include not only science fiction, but also articles for the magazines Playboy and Family Circle . At times he was responsible for the entries on Emperor Tiberius in the Encyclopædia Britannica .

Pohl was a regular guest on Long John Nebel's radio show from the 1950s through the 1970s. Pohl was also the eighth president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America , a post he took on in 1974.

Pohl was married several times. His first wife, Leslie Perri, was also a member of the Futurians, they married in August 1940 but divorced during the war. Pohl then married Dorothy LesTina in Paris in August 1945. Both were stationed with the American army in Europe at that time . In 1948 he married again, this time Judith Merril , with whom he had a daughter, Ann. Merril and Pohl divorced in 1953. From 1953 to 1982 Pohl was married to Carol Metcal Ulf. Since 1984 he was married to Elizabeth Anne Hull, a graduate science fiction expert. Pohl lived in Red Bank , New Jersey , which is close to New York City, and most recently in Palatine , Illinois .

Pohl is the grandfather of the author Emily Pohl-Weary.

He died on September 2, 2013 at the age of 93.

Awards

With the Roman Man Plus (1976) he won the Nebula Award , and with the Roman Gateway (1977, see Gateway Trilogy ) the Nebula and Hugo Awards , the Locus Award , the John W. Campbell Award and the Prix Tour Apollo.

Pohl is one of the most frequently awarded science fiction writers. He won a total of six times the Hugo Award (the only one as editor and author), three times the Nebula Award (including the Grand Master for his life's work), three times the Locus Award , and twice the John W. Campbell Memorial Award , among others. He received other awards for his work outside of science fiction, including the United Nations Society of Writers Award .

In 2011 the asteroid (12284) Pohl was named after Frederik Pohl at the suggestion of David Brin .

Hugo Award

  • 1966–1968 If , Best Professional Science Fiction Magazine
  • 1973 The Meeting , best short story (together with Cyril M. Kornbluth)
  • 1978 Gateway (German: Gateway ), best novel
  • 1986 Fermi and Frost (Eng .: Fermi and Frost ), best short story

Nebula Award

  • 1977 Man Plus (German: The Plus Man ), best novel
  • 1978 Gateway (German: Gateway ), best novel

Locus Award

  • 1973 The Gold at the Starbow's End ( Eng .: Beyond the Sun ), best novel
  • 1978 Gateway (German: Gateway ), best science fiction novel
  • 1979 The Way the Future Was: A Memoir , best non-fiction book

John W. Campbell Memorial Award

  • 1978 Gateway (German: Gateway )
  • 1985 The Years of the City (German: Supercity )

Other awards:

bibliography

Series and cycles

The series are arranged according to the year of publication of the first part.

The Space Merchants
  • The Space Merchants (1952) (with Cyril M. Kornbluth)
  • The Merchant's War (1984)
Jim Eden / Undersea Trilogy

(with Jack Williamson )

  • Undersea Quest (1954)
    • German: Duel in the deep. Pabel, 1978.
  • Undersea Fleet (1956)
    • German: Cities under the Ocean. Pabel, 1960.
  • Undersea City (1958)
    • German: Alarm in the deep sea. Moewig, 1961.
Starchild

(with Jack Williamson)

  • The Reefs of Space (1964)
    • German: Reefs in space. Moewig, 1981.
  • Starchild (1965)
    • German: The Star God. Moewig, 1968.
  • Rogue Star (1969)
    • German: The Outsider Star. Pabel, 1976.
The Saga of Cuckoo

(with Jack Williamson)

  • Farthest Star (1975)
    • German: Object Lambda. Pabel, 1978.
  • Wall Around a Star (1975)
Gateway cycle
  • Gateway (1976)
  • Beyond the Blue Event Horizon (1980)
  • Heechee Rendezvous (1984)
  • The Annals of the Heechee (1987)
  • The Gateway Trip - Tales and Vignettes of the Heechee (1990)
  • The Boy Who Would Live Forever (2004)
Eschaton trilogy
  • The Other End of Time (1996)
  • The Siege of Eternity (1997)
  • The Far Shore of Time (1999)

Single novels

Story 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)
  • Day Million (1970)
  • The Gold at the Starbow's End (1972)
  • The Best of Frederik Pohl (1975)
  • The Early Pohl (1976)
    • German: Farewell, earth. Pabel, 1980.
  • In the Problem Pit: And Other Stories (1976)
  • Critical Mass (1977) (with Cyril M. Kornbluth)
  • Survival Kit (1979)
  • Before the Universe (1980) (with Cyril M. Kornbluth)
  • Planets Three (1981)
  • Midas World (1983)
  • Pohlstars (1984)
  • Bipohl (1987)
  • Our Best: The Best of Frederik Pohl and CM Kornbluth (1987) (with Cyril M. Kornbluth)
  • The Future Quartet: Earth in the Year 2042 (1994) (with Ben Bova , Jerry Pournelle and Charles Sheffield )
  • Platinum Pohl (2001)

As editor

  • Beyond the End of Time (1952)
  • Shadow of Tomorrow (1953)
  • Star Science Fiction Stories No. 1 (1953)
  • Star Science Fiction Stories No. 2 (1953)
  • Assignment in Tomorrow (1954)
  • Star Science Fiction Stories No. 3 (1954)
  • Star Science Fiction Stories No. 4 (1958)
  • Star Science Fiction Stories No. 5 (1959)
  • Star Science Fiction Stories No. 6 (1959)
  • The Expert Dreamers (1962)
  • Star Short Novels (1963)
  • The Eleventh Galaxy Reader (1964)
  • The Eighth Galaxy Reader (1965)
  • Worlds of If 116 (1967)
  • Star Fourteen (1968)
  • Worlds of If 128 (1968)
  • Worlds of If 129 (1969)
  • Nightmare Age (1970)
  • Best Science Fiction for 1972 (1972)
  • Jupiter (1973) (with Carol Pohl)
  • Science fiction. The Great Years (1973) (with Carol Pohl)
  • Science fiction. The Great Years, Volume Two (1974) (with Carol Pohl)
  • The Science Fiction Roll of Honor (1975)
  • Science Fiction Discoveries (1976) (with Carol Pohl)
  • Science Fiction of the 40s (1978) (with Damon Knight )
  • Galaxy. Thirty Years of Innovative Science Fiction (1979)
  • Great Science Fiction Series. Stories from the Best of the Science Fiction Series from 1944 to 1980 by All-Time Favorite Writers (1980)
  • Galaxy 2 (1981)
  • Yesterday's Tomorrows: Favorite Stories from Forty Years As a Science Fiction Editor (1987)
  • Worlds of If: A Retrospective Anthology (with Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph Olander)
  • Science Fiction from China (1989)
  • The SFWA Grand Masters, Volume 2 (1992)
  • The SFWA Grand Masters, Volume 3 (1996)
  • The SFWA Grand Masters (1999)

German compilations:

Non-fiction

  • Practical Politics (1971)
  • The Viking Settlements of North America (1972)
  • The Way the Future Was: A Memoir (1978)
  • Science Fiction Studies in Film (1980)
  • New Visions. A Collection of Modern Science Fiction Art (1982)
  • Our Angry Earth (1981) (with Isaac Asimov )
  • Prince Henry Sinclair: His Expedition to the New World in 1398 (1995)
  • Chasing Science: Science as Spectator Sport (1995)

literature

Biographies and Monographs
  • Thomas D. Clareson: Frederik Pohl. Starmont reader's guide. Tarmont House, Mercer Island, Washington 1987, ISBN 0-930261-33-X .
  • Michael R. Page: Frederik Pohl. University of Illinois Press, Urbana 2015, ISBN 978-0-252-03965-2 .
  • Phil Stephensen-Payne: Frederik Pohl, Merchant of Excellence. A Working Bibliography. 2 vols. Leeds 1989, ISBN 978-1871133097 .
items
  • Albrecht Fritzsche: The dubious attraction of writing books about films. Frederik Pohl, or How to earn a living as a writer. In: The Worlds of Science Fiction. 15 approaches to the most successful genre of our time. Corian-Verlag Meitingen, 1988. ISBN 3-89048-313-5 .
Lexicons

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Frederik Pohl: Chasing Science , Locus Online , October 2000, accessed on December 2, 2018.
  2. Frederik Pohl, Worldly-Wise Master of Science Fiction, Dies at 93 , The New York Times , September 3, 2013