{"id":1273,"date":"2016-11-26T20:04:09","date_gmt":"2016-11-27T02:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/?p=1273"},"modified":"2016-11-26T20:04:09","modified_gmt":"2016-11-27T02:04:09","slug":"reading-the-merchants-of-venus-to-observe-frederik-pohls-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/reading-the-merchants-of-venus-to-observe-frederik-pohls-birthday\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading “The Merchants of Venus” to Observe Frederik Pohl’s Birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fred<\/a>Frederik Pohl was born on this date, November 26, in 1919.\u00a0 He passed away in 2013.\u00a0 Pohl was one of the top science fiction writers of the Twentieth Century.\u00a0 In addition to writing such classics as The Space Merchants<\/em> (cowritten with C. M. Kornbluth)\u00a0 and the memoir The Way the Future Wa<\/em>s, as well as editing Galaxy<\/em> magazine and being a founding member of the fan group The Futurians, he was an active author until the day he died.<\/p>\n

The 1970s was a productive decade for Pohl.\u00a0 Beginning with “The Merchants of Venus”, his Heechee series was highly successful.\u00a0 The first novel, Gateway<\/em>, won the Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell awards.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The novels revolve around artifacts left millennia ago by a race of aliens called the Heechee.\u00a0 In the novels, brave explorers get in a Heechee vessel and head out to parts unknown.\u00a0 Literally.\u00a0 There is no way to tell where a Heechee vessel is going, how long the trip will take, or what waits at the other end.\u00a0 It could be a fortune, a bust, or a one-way trip.<\/p>\n

\"worlds-of-if-july-august-1972\"<\/a>What is not as well-known is that the Heechee were first introduced in “The Merchants of Venus”, first published in Worlds of If<\/em> in the July-August 1972 issue.\u00a0 The space ships haven’t been found yet, but Heechee tunnels under the surface of Venus have.\u00a0 Audee Walthers is a prospector hoping to score a major find.\u00a0 He’s running out of time.\u00a0 He needs a new liver, and soon.\u00a0 If he can’t come up with a way to pay for it, he’s a goner.<\/p>\n

Due to the economic constraints of orbital mechanics, tourist ships only show up at certain times on Venus.\u00a0 So when a charter arrives carrying a tycoon from Earth accompanied by a lovely young lady, Audee jumps at the chance to be the man’s guide.\u00a0 But the tycoon has an agenda of his own…<\/p>\n

“The Merchants of Venus” is a well-done tale, one of Pohl’s best.\u00a0 It’s not as good as the novels that came later, especially Gateway<\/em>.\u00a0 As the series went on, some of the mysteries were resolved, which to me killed some of the appeal of the series.\u00a0 The mystery wasn’t as compelling in my mind.<\/p>\n

But I digress.\u00a0 Pohl creates a compelling, if slightly flawed, character in Audee.\u00a0 The tension mounts as Audee tries to find a score that will save his life while the time runs out.\u00a0 This is science fiction the way it should be written.\u00a0 It reminded me of why I read so much of Pohl’s work growing up.\u00a0 I first encountered Frederik Pohl’s short fiction in the SFBC edition of The Best of Frederik Pohl<\/em> (which didn’t contain “The Merchants of Venus”, probably due to length).\u00a0 I was hooked.<\/p>\n

I may give the Heechee series a reread soon.\u00a0 I never did get around to reading the final volume (The Boy Who Would Live Forever<\/em>) that came out in 2004.\u00a0 I’ve also got The Eschaton Sequence<\/em> sitting on my desk.<\/p>\n

If you’ve not read Pohl, or not read the Heechee series, “The Merchants of Venus” is a great place to start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frederik Pohl was born on this date, November 26, in 1919.\u00a0 He passed away in 2013.\u00a0 Pohl was one of the top science fiction writers of the Twentieth Century.\u00a0 In addition to writing such classics as The Space Merchants (cowritten with C. M. Kornbluth)\u00a0 and the memoir The Way the Future Was, as well as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[102],"tags":[664,827],"class_list":["post-1273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fred-pohl","tag-frederik-pohl","tag-heechee"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P5pJ-kx","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1275,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1273\/revisions\/1275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}