Frederik Pohl
Personal Information
Description
Frederik Pohl, Jr. was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father held a number of jobs, and his family moved many times in his childhood before settling in Brooklyn when he was about seven. He attended Brooklyn Tech high school, but dropped out and took a job to help support his family. As a teen, he founded the New York science fiction writer's group The Futurians. His first publication, a poem, appeared in Amazing Stories in 1937, when he was 18 years old. In 1936, he joined the Young Communist League and became President of the Brooklyn branch, but he left it in 1939 after Stalin-Hitler pact. In 1939, at the age of 21, he was editor of both Super Science Stories and Astonishing Stories, and regularly published his own stories in both of them. He married his first wife in 1940. In 1943 both the magazines he was editing folded, and he worked as a literary agent. During World War II, he served with the Army Air Corps from 1945-1945. He divorced his first wife during this period and married his second wife in 1945. In 1948 he married his third wife, Judith Merril, who he divorced in 1953, the same year he married his fourth wife, Carol Metcal Ulf. In the early 1950s his literary agency business failed and he returned to editing as an assistant editor at Galaxy Science Fiction and later also if Magazine. In 1966, 1967, and 1968 his magazines won Hugo Awards for Best Professional Magazines. In the 1970s he acquired and edited novels for the "Frederik Pohl Selections" series of Bantam Books. He also began to emerge as a novel writer, and went on to win Nebula awards for fiction in 1976 and 1977 and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1978. He married his current wife, science fiction editor and academic Elizabeth Anne Hull, PhD, in 1984. He continues to write from his home in Palatine, Illinois.
Books
Undersea City
It was the most dreaded of all undersea phenomena. If strong enough, it would set up chain-reaction pressures that could shatter any dome and cost inestimable lives. But the Krakatoan Dome has been specifically designed to cope with the tremors of its seaquake-prone area. The trouble was, all of a sudden, there were more quakes than any of the experts had counted on...quakes that no one could possibly have forecast because they hadn't come from natural causes. The Sub-Sea Academy had assigned Cadet Jim Eden to the KRakatoan Dome to find out what was going on, and for very special reasons. First, he was more at home in the underwater world than most anyone else. But, even more important, they sent Jim because his uncle was suspected of being the heinous saboteur!
Gateway
As a Chinese adoptee in St. Louis, teenage Daiyu often feels out of place. When an elderly Asian jewelry seller at a street fair shows her a black jade ring—and tells her that "black jade" translates to "Daiyu"—she buys it as a talisman of her heritage. But it's more than that; it's magic. It takes Daiyu through a gateway into a version of St. Louis much like 19th century China. Almost immediately she is recruited as a spy, which means hours of training in manners and niceties and sleight of hand. It also means stealing time to be with handsome Kalen, who is in on the plan. There's only one problem. Once her task is done, she must go back to St. Louis and leave him behind forever. . . .
Lands end
Twelve-year-old Joshua finds his life and attitudes considerably altered by his association with the new family that moves into the abandoned house nearby.
Wolfbane
The Earth has been torn away from the Sun, kidnapped by a runaway planet , whose inhabitants - enigmatic, utterly alien Pyramids - have their own plans for Earth's resources. And humankind, depending for warmth on a constantly renewed but woefully inadequate Moon, wracked by hunger and ruled by a slavish conformity to tradition, is dying out. But there are those who defy convention and refuse to give in. Feared and persecuted by the ordinary citizens, these 'Wolves' are preparing to fight back against the Pyramids.
Starburst
Time, Space and the Future. Here is your passport into the fascinating world of science fiction... eleven dazzling, jet-propelled, rocket-paced tales of tomorrow by one of today's leading writers. Contents: Disappearing Act (1953) Adam and No Eve (1941) Star Light, Star Bright (1953) The Roller Coaster (1953) Oddy and Id (1950) The Starcomber (1954) Travel Diary (1958) Fondly Fahrenheit (1954) Hobson's Choice (1952) The Die-Hard (1958) Of Time and Third Avenue (1951)
Search the Sky
"How would you like to live in a future world where Congress is made up of senators from large orporations? Mitch Courtenay, ace copywirter for Copysmith StarClass is given the job of convincing people that they ought to emigrate to Venus."--Book jacket.
The Future in Question
The Nature of the Title - essay by Isaac Asimov What's It Like Out There? - novelette by Edmond Hamilton Who Can Replace a Man? - short story by Brian W. Aldiss What Have I Done? - short story by Mark Clifton Who's There? - short story by Arthur C. Clarke Can You Feel Anything When I Do This? - short story by Robert Sheckley Why? - short story by Robert Silverberg What's Become of Screwloose? - short story by Ron Goulart Houston, Houston, Do You Read? - novella by James Tiptree, Jr. Where Have You Been, Billy Boy, Billy Boy? - short story by Kate Wilhelm If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister? - novella by Theodore Sturgeon Will You Wait? - short story by Alfred Bester Who Goes There? - novella by John W. Campbell, Jr. An Eye for a What? - novelette by Damon Knight I Plinglot, Who You? - novelette by Frederik Pohl (variant of I Plinglot — Who You?) Will You Walk a Little Faster? - short story by William Tenn (variant of "Will You Walk a Little Faster") Who's in Charge Here? - short story by James Blish The Last Question - short story by Isaac Asimov
Star Short Novels (Little Men / For I Am a Jealous People! / To Here and the Easel)
Heechee Rendezvous
The third novel in Frederik Pohl's 'Heechee Saga', continuing the story of mankind's discovery of, and search for, an ancient space-faring civilization that had risen and then disappeared before the time intelligent life developed on earth. Preceded by "Gateway" and "Beyond the Blue Event Horizon". Followed by "The Annals of the Heechee" and "The Boy Who Would Live Forever: A Novel of Gateway"
Platinum Pohl
For over forty years Frederik Pohl has been a famous science fiction writer, and much of his fame is due to his wonderful short stories. He's won the Hugo and Nebula Awards as well as many other awards for both novels and shorter works. Included in this new collection is "Fermi and Frost," the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novelette that perhaps best exemplifies the qualities that have made Pohl's SF so popular for so long: an intriguing science fictional premise, a bold political assertion, subtly shaped characters who command your respect and engage your sympathy, and a surely told narrative that holds you to the end. In all the tales in this wonderful collection of memorable stories, Pohl draws you into a delightful multitude of worlds and times, some familiar, some utterly alien, but all compulsively inviting. Which is why this is Platinum Pohlonly the highest standard applies! A special treat exclusive to Platinum Pohl is a never-before-published Heechee story!
One Hundred
Jackie Sees a Star by Marion Zimmer Bradley All Cats are Gray by Andre Norton Song in a Minor Key by C. L. Moore Travel Diary by Alfred Bester Pythias by Frederik Pohl The Good Neighbors by Edgar Pangborn The Sound of Silence by Barbara Constant The Intruder by Emil Petaja An Ounce of Cure by Alan Edward Nourse Longevity by Therese Windser The Ghost of Mohammed Din by Clark Ashton Smith Of Time and Texas by William F. Nolan Native Son by Thelma Hamm Evans Gorgono and Slith by Ray Bradbury The Eyes Have It by Philip K. Dick The Putnam Tradition by Sonya Dorman Gods of the North by Robert E. Howard Small World by William F. Nolan Nightmare on the Nose by Evelyn E. Smith Collector's Item by Robert F. Young Crossroads of Destiny by H. Beam Piper The Hoofer by Walter M. Miller, Jr. Doorstep by Keith Laumer The Jovian Jest by Lilith Lorraine Dream World by R. A. Lafferty Shatter the Wall by Sydney Van Scyoc The Big Engine by Fritz Leiber Misbegotten Missionary by Isaac Asimov The One and the Many by Milton Lesser The Glory of Ippling by Helen M. Urban Where There's Hope by Jerome Bixby 2BR02B by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Disqualified by Charles L. Fontenay No Strings Attached by Lester del Rey Zeritsky's Law by Ann Griffith Say Hello for Me by Frank W. Coggins Navy Day by Harry Harrison The Undersea Tube by Lucile Taylor Hansen Probability by Louis Trimble No Shield from the Dead by Gordon R. Dickson I'll Kill You Tomorrow by Helen Huber The Secret of Kralitz by Henry Kuttner Never Stop to Pat a Kitten by Miriam Allen deFord More than Shadow by Dorothy Quick The Monkey Spoons by Mary Elizabeth Counselman Witch of the Demon Seas by Poul Anderson The Piebald Hippogriff by Karen Anderson The Vampire of Wembley by Edgar Wallace Riya's Foundling by Algis Budrys Ask a Foolish Question by Robert Sheckley Flight From Tomorrow by H. Beam Piper Robots of the World! Arise! by Mari Wolf The Worlds of If by Stanley G. Weinbaum The Adventurer by C. M. Kornbluth Decision by Frank M. Robinson The Waker Dreams by Richard Matheson A Matter of Proportion by Anne Walker One-Shot by James Blish McILVAINE'S Star by August Derleth The Man with the Nose by Rhoda Broughton Operation Haystack by Frank Herbert The Nothing Equation by Tom Godwin The Man Who Saw the Future by Edmond Hamilton Common Denominator by John D. MacDonald The Natives by Katherine MacLEAN The Lonely by Judith Merril The Street That Wasn't There by Clifford D. Simak and Carl Jacobi Food for Friendship by E. C. Tubb Half Around Pluto by Manly Wade Wellman Project Hush by William Tenn Time Enough At Last by Lynn Venable Bride of the Dark One by Florence Verbell Brown The Cosmic Express by Jack Williamson The Next Logical Step by Ben Bova They Twinkled like Jewels by Philip José Farmer Shandy by Ron Goulart Tight Squeeze by Dean C. Ing Extracts from the Galactick Almanack by Laurence Janifer Postmark Ganymede by Robert Silverberg Hot Planet by Hal Clement The Tenth Scholar by Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem A Little Journey by Ray Bradbury Strain by L. Ron Hubbard The Time of Cold by Mary Carlson The Customs Lounge by Annie Proulx I, Executioner by Ted White and Terry Carr and many more
The Hugo Winners. Volume 3, Book 2
The word for world is forest / Ursula K. Le Guin -- Goat song / Poul Anderson -- The meeting / Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth -- Eurema's dam / R.A. Lafferty -- The girl who was plugged in / by James Tiptree Jr. -- The deathbird / by Harlan Ellison -- The ones who walked away from Omelas / by Ursula K. Le Guin -- A song for Lya / by George R.R. Martin -- Adrift just off the islets of Langerhans: latitude 38 degrees 54' N, longitude 77 degrees 00' 13" W / by Harlan Ellison -- The hole man / by Larry Niven --
Homegoing
Homegoing is the debut historical fiction novel by Ghanaian-American author Yaa Gyasi, published in 2016. Each chapter in the novel follows a different descendant of an Asante woman named Maame, starting with her two daughters, who are half-sisters, separated by circumstance: Effia marries James Collins, the British governor in charge of Cape Coast Castle, while her half-sister Esi is held captive in the dungeons below. Subsequent chapters follow their children and following generations. The novel was selected in 2016 for the National Book Foundation's "5 under 35" award, the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Award for best first book, and was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2017. It received the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for 2017, an American Book Award, and the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature.
The Seventh Galaxy Reader
Stories from Galaxy Magazine: 1960-1963. Introduction / Frederik Pohl. For love / Algis Budrys. Come into my cellar / Ray Bradbury. The tail-tied kings / Avram Davidson. Crime machine / Robert Bloch. Return engagement / Lester Del Rey. Earthmen bearing gifts / Frederic Brown. Rainbird / R.A. Lafferty. Three portraits and a prayer / Frederik Pohl. Something bright / Zenna Henderson. On the gem planet / Cordwainer Smith. The deep down dragon / Judith Merril. The king of the city / Keith Laumer. The beat cluster / Fritz Leiber. An old fashioned bird Christmas / Margaret St. Clair. The big pat boom / Damon Knight.