{"id":903,"date":"2013-09-03T22:02:05","date_gmt":"2013-09-04T03:02:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/?p=903"},"modified":"2013-09-03T22:02:05","modified_gmt":"2013-09-04T03:02:05","slug":"rip-frederik-pohl-november-26-1919-september-2-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/rip-frederik-pohl-november-26-1919-september-2-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"RIP, Frederik Pohl (November 26, 1919 – September 2, 2013)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fred<\/a>One of the last living links to the early days of science fiction has died. Frederik Pohl entered the hospital yesterday morning with respiratory distress and passed away yesterday afternoon.<\/p>\n

Pohl started out as a fan and moved to become an editor, agent, and writer. His first editing job came when he was just 19, taking the helm at Astonishing Stories<\/em> and Super Science Stories<\/em>. He was also a founding member of the Futurians<\/a>.\u00a0 He served in World War II, and after the war briefly became a literary agent.<\/p>\n

He collaborated with a number of writers throughout the decades, including Lester Del Rey (Preferred Risk<\/em> as by Edson McCann), Jack Williamson (The Starchild Trilogy<\/em>, Farthest Star<\/em>, Wall Around a Star<\/em>, Land’s End<\/em>, The Singers of Time<\/em>) and Arthur C. Clarke (The Last Theorem<\/em>).\u00a0 His most famous and successful collaborations were with fellow Futurian C. M. Kornbluth, beginning with the classic The Space Merchants<\/em>, and including Search the Sky<\/em>, Gladiator-at-Law<\/em> and Wolfbane\u00a0<\/em>as well as a number of short stories.<\/p>\n

Pohl edited Ballantine Books’ Star Science Fiction<\/em> series in the 1950s, introducing the\u00a0 concept of the original (nonthemed) anthology.\u00a0 In the 1960s, he was the editor of Galaxy<\/em> and If<\/em> magazines.\u00a0 During the 70s he was an editor at Bantam.\"Gateway\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Like his collaborator Jack Williamson, Pohl continued to write novels almost until his death.\u00a0 His most recent was All the Lives He Led<\/em> (2011).\u00a0 His Heechee saga is one of the landmarks of modern science fiction, especially the first volume, Gateway<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I had the privilege of meeting Pohl once in the summer of 1991, when the Science Fiction Research Association held a meeting on the campus of the University of North Texas.\u00a0 Among those in attendance were Pohl, Jack Williamson, L. Sprague de Camp, and James Gunn.\u00a0 Pohl was very friendly and chatted with me for a bit about what he was working on.\u00a0 The books he signed for me at that event are among the most prized in my library.<\/p>\n

I can’t help but feel like an era has ended.\u00a0 I grew up reading science fiction by people like Pohl.\u00a0 In fact, one of the first, if not the first, book I ever bought from the Science Fiction Book Club was The Best of Frederik Pohl<\/em>.\u00a0 I bought almost every SFBC edition of his work until I graduated high school.<\/p>\n

\"platinum<\/a>He will be missed.\u00a0 As cliched as it sounds, we shall not see his like again.\u00a0 Many of his novels are still in print, and his best short fiction was collected a few years ago in Platinum Pohl<\/em>, which contains a number of stories written after The Best of Frederik Pohl<\/em> was published.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the last living links to the early days of science fiction has died. Frederik Pohl entered the hospital yesterday morning with respiratory distress and passed away yesterday afternoon. Pohl started out as a fan and moved to become an editor, agent, and writer. His first editing job came when he was just 19, […]<\/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":[661,102,662,7,266,12,663],"tags":[778,664,779,780],"class_list":["post-903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c-m-kornbluth","category-fred-pohl","category-jack-williamson","category-james-gunn","category-lester-del-rey","category-obituary","category-the-futurians","tag-c-m-kornbluth","tag-frederik-pohl","tag-jack-williamson","tag-the-futurians"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P5pJ-ez","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903","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=903"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":908,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903\/revisions\/908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}