Fred Pohl

Scalzi went and broke Fred Pohl yesterday. His website anyway. Scalzi’s Whatever promoted Fred’s new blog and the server hosting it was overwhelmed for a while.

John suggested that if any of his readers had never heard of Pohl, they should throw themselves into a wood chipper. He forgot to add “feet first”.

How could any self-respecting fan NOT be familiar with Pohl? At least in passing.

The poor guy has been hanging around with SF since at least 1939. 1939! That’s when he missed attending the world’s first World Science Fiction Convention because his New York area SF club – the Futurians – were having a feud with Sam Moskowitz’s club…

Fred edited and discovered or seriously promoted some of the brightest stars in the SF pantheon – Cordwainer Smith, Larry Niven, Samuel Delany, Joanna Russ among others – and his selections helped the magazines he edited win numerous awards (Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein, for example).

Here’s some first issue covers of the magazines he worked on:

He also edited a number of anthologies over the years – the Star series (a paperback continuation of the magazine of the same name), SF The Great Years, the SFWA Grandmasters series and many more.

And of course he wrote. If you’re looking for a shortlist to catch up:

The Space Merchants, Man Plus, Jem and Gateway. Then, go back and read The Reefs of Space (and finish the series if you like it), finish the Gateway series if you liked that, pick up Wolfsbane and Gladiator-at-Law if you liked his collaboration with Kornbluth, pick up Undersea Quest if you liked his work with Williamson or The Best of Frederik Pohl and Early Pohl if you want to see what he does with short stories.

Then read everything else.

And don’t forget to follow him (almost) daily at his new blog