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This article is about the writer and editor. For the historian, see Frederick J. Pohl.

Frederik Pohl (born November 26, 1919) is a noted American science fiction writer and editor, with a career spanning over sixty years. From about 1959 until 1969, Pohl edited Galaxy magazine and its sister magazine If, winning the Hugo for If three years running. His writing also won him three Hugos and multiple Nebula Awards. He became a Nebula Grand Master in 1993. For a time he was the official authority for the Encyclopedia Britannica on the subject of Emperor Tiberius.

Biography and writing career

Pohl's early years were spent in a number of places. His father held a number of jobs, and the Pohls lived in such wide-flung locations as Texas, California, New Mexico, and the Panama Canal Zone. Around age 7, Pohl and his family settled in Brooklyn. While attending the prestigious Bronx High School of Science, he formed a lifelong friendship with fellow writer Isaac Asimov. Pohl dropped out of school at the age of fourteen to find work due to the Great Depression.

In 1936 Pohl joined the Communist Party. However, Party elders expelled him, in the belief that the escapist nature of science fiction risked corrupting the minds of youth. Like Asimov, he was a member of the New York based Futurians fan group.

Pohl has been married several times. His first wife was fellow Futurian Leslie Perri. In the 1950s he was married to Judith Merril, an important figure in the world of science fiction, with whom he one daughter. He is currently married to science fiction editor and academic Elizabeth Ann Hull.

He was a friend and collaborator with Cyril M. Kornbluth, co-authoring a number of short stories and several novels, including a dystopian satire of a world ruled by the advertising agencies, The Space Merchants (a belated sequel, The Merchants' War (1984) was written by Pohl alone, after Kornbluth's death). This is not to be confused with "The Merchants of Venus", an unconnected 1972 novella where the Heechee were first introduced and which also includes biting satire on runaway free market capitalism.

A number of his short stories were notable for a satirical look at consumerism and advertising in the 1950s and 1960s: "The Wizard of Pung's Corner", where flashy, overcomplex military hardware prove useless against farmers with shotguns, and "The Tunnel Under the World", where an entire community is held captive by advertising researchers (this one-line summary omits several plot twists).

In the mid-1970s, Pohl acquired and edited novels for Bantam Books, published as "Frederik Pohl Selections"; the most notable were Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren and Joanna Russ's The Female Man. Also in the 1970s, Pohl reemerged as a novel writer in his own right, with books such as Man Plus and the Heechee series. He won back-to-back Nebula awards with Man Plus in 1976 and Gateway, the first novel in the Heechee series, in 1977. Gateway also won the 1978 novel Hugo Award. Two of his stories have also earned him Hugo awards: "The Meeting" (with Kornbluth) was a tie in 1973 and "Fermi and Frost" won in 1986. Another notable late novel of his is Jem (1980). Pohl continues to write and had a new story, "Generations", published in September 2005. As of June 2006, he is working on a novel begun by Arthur C. Clarke with the provisional title "The Last Theorem".

His works include not only science fiction but also articles for Playboy and Family Circle.

Works

Series

  • Undersea Trilogy (with Jack Williamson):
    • Undersea Quest (1954)
    • Undersea Fleet (1956)
    • Undersea City (1958)

  • Eschaton:
    • The Other End of Time (1996)
    • The Siege of Eternity (1997)
    • The Far Shore of Time (1999)

  • Starchild Trilogy (with Jack Williamson):
    • The Reefs of Space (1964)
    • Starchild (1965)
    • Rogue Star (1969)

Other Novels (not part of a series)

Collections

Autobiography

  • The Way the Future Was (1978)

Non-Fiction

  • Tiberius (1960) (writing as Ernst Mason)
  • Practical Politics 1972 (1971)
  • Our Angry Earth (1991) (with Isaac Asimov)
  • Chasing Science: Science as Spectator Sport (2000)

External links

1919 births | Living people | American writers | Hugo Award winning authors | Nebula Award winning authors | Nebula Grand Masters | Science fiction editors | American science fiction writers | Unitarians | Futurians | Science Fiction Hall of Fame

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