A Variety of Excellence
Nothing is easy to categorize about the life and works of Frederik Pohl. His stories vary more in length, attitude, type and treatment than those of any other writer I know. About the only point of similarity is the high level of excellence to be found in everything from his short-shorts to his novels. To make things more difficult for a biographer, he has been one of the leaders in almost every activity that in any way relates to the broad field of science fiction.
Even his career as a writer falls into two widely separated periods which seem totally unrelated to each other.
He began writing professionally in the very early forties, when he was just out of his teens. A large number of his stories, under a host of pen names, were written in collaboration with one or more other authors, and nobody seems entirely sure of exactly how many people or stories were involved. There were also twelve stories under the name of James McCreigh. The work produced during this period was generally quite competent—good enough to win him welcome from a number of markets—but there was nothing about it to distinguish him from many other young writers of the period.
The second phase of his writing career began eleven years later, after a long hiatus; and his reputation was established from the first story, a serial by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth—called Gravy Planet in the magazine version, but retitled The Space Merchants for book publication. This was unquestionably the most important novel published in 1952. It was favorably reviewed by publications that ranged from The Wall Street Journal to organs of the extreme political left, none of which normally gave any space to science fiction.
Pohl and Kornbluth brought the art of satire back to science fiction and were soon being widely imitated by other writers; in fact, the influence of this work reshaped much of the field during the next two decades.
This novel was soon followed by two other collaborations with Kornbluth. Some of the self-proclaimed critics in the field, who remembered Pohl's earlier stories and esteemed the independent work of Kornbluth, immediately decided that Pohl was largely dependent on Kornbluth for the high quality of their novels. They proceeded to pick the works apart, deciding who had done what—and the parts they admired were always ascribed to Kornbluth.
Kornbluth agreed with Pohl that these critics were amazingly consistent in being wrong about it, so far as could be remembered. But this didn't quiet the part-pickers. Even the publication of Pohl's first independent novel, Slave Ship, wasn't enough to convince them, though it certainly should have done so. However, as other works by Pohl appeared, even the most severe critics were forced to concede that he was one of the major novelists of the field.
Meantime, among the readers, he was developing a high reputation as a writer of shorter fiction, in which he had no collaborator. His novelette, "The Midas Plague," was the first of his independent stories to appear in Galaxy Magazine, in April, 1954. This is a brilliant example of satirical writing, with the shocking bite of its main assumption muted nicely by an element of humor. It is also an extrapolation of one trend, carried just a bit further than any other writer would dare to go with it, and then justified by the other well-developed details of such a society.
I recently had an excellent chance to discover just how good Pohl is as a writer of shorter fiction. In making the selections that appear in this book, I read through every word of eight collections of Pohl's shorter works. That comes to about half a million words!
Generally I've found that reading all of any one collection of shorts and novelettes by a single writer is not to be done at a single stretch. After all, shorter works are never meant to be read together, but rather to be separated by many months in magazine publication. Most writers tend to stick to certain themes, or do certain types of stories much better than others. When read at one sitting, these become too obvious, too repetitive—boring, in fact, in such an unfair way of reading them.
For that reason, I approached the task rather reluctantly. I planned to read one book at a time, then wait a week, and try another.
It didn't work that way. I read all eight books in less than a weekend found that I thoroughly enjoyed them. I not only didn't find that the reading grew monotonous, but I began to look forward to each new volume with anticipation.
The works in this collection all appeared between 1954 and 1967; there have been outstanding stories since, but I agree with Frederik Pohl that we need more time to determine which of those should endure as his best. Meantime, these are the ones I consider his best, chosen from a rich production that can often be honestly termed memorable. Probably other readers would have made other choices—there are too many good stories to make selection simple. But I have chosen these after a great deal of consideration.
As I read, I kept a list of the stories I felt mandatory for inclusion, planning to fill the remainder with "next-best" stories. Again, it didn't work out that way. My list of "must" stories was twice as long as the limits of the book permitted. So I had to go back and weed out stories, hating to eliminate even one, to reach a manageable length.
There seems to be no limit to the variety to be found in the shorter works of Frederik Pohl, in fact. They vary in length from 1,500 to 21,000 words, and that is the smallest element of their variety. Some of them, like "The Midas Plague," might be called satirical—but not with the cold sardonic contrivance so common to this much-abused form of literature. Pohl is involved in the cultures he shows; he may be sardonic or amused, but he feels himself a part of that which he holds up to the distorting mirror of reality.
Some stories depend on a twist at the end; usually this occurs in the shorter pieces, as should be the case. However, the twist is not to surprise the reader, but to bring the idea to a quick and pointed conclusion that is completely satisfactory. And there is always more than the twist. "Grandy Devil" is based on a marvelous character in a family that is strangely immortal; "Punch" tells us more about ourselves and all intelligent life than is conveyed in many novels, short as the story is.
"Tunnel Under the World" is a story of terror and of pathos—an odd blend of emotions, indeed. It is also a fine suspense-action story. "The Hated" could have been a simple action story, but the heroes it presents to us are engaging in a different kind of conflict with their environment.
There are stories that would simply be sentimental in the hands of a lesser writer. "Father of the Stars" tells of a man who felt he had to go to the ends of explored space, and how he succeeded; we've all read that story a dozen times, but not in this form! "Three Portraits and a Prayer" tells of an old scientist who learned he was wrong. There's sentiment there for those who can empathize—but no sentimentality.
Some might be called "idea" stories. (All are built around ideas, of course; but some ideas tend to obtrude beyond the story, except in the hands of a very skillful craftsman.) "The Day the Martians Came" is one of the oldest ideas, first given acceptable form in Wells' War of the Worlds. The title gives it all away—or does it? All the ingredients are familiar—except the way we see it, and what we realize from Pott's view. "Speed Trap," on the other hand, is a totally new idea, so far as I can determine, beautifully turned into excellent fiction. "The Day the Icicle Works Closed" gives us a new service for tourists, another idea that makes me wonder why no one thought of it before.
It's hard to say whether there's a new idea in "Day Million"—Pohl says it's a love story, the oldest idea in literature. It is a love story, but I find nothing old in it.
And finally, skipping over a few other selections you can discover for yourself, there is an article, as a sample of several excellent pieces of science non-fiction authored by Pohl. In this day of computers, we should all master arithmetic to the base two, but most of us still cling to the decimal rut. Pohl teaches us how natural and simple the new system is—and shows us that it's the only way to master some of the ordinary problems of daily life.
There was also no problem of balancing the book to insure sufficient variety. That took care of itself.
Pohl's career in science fiction is at least as varied and complex as his writing.
Like so many of us, he began his public life as a "fan," a reader of science fiction who became so enamored of the literature that he had to join with others in discussing and proselytizing it. In those days, there was a small number of such fans who were so well known that many became more famous in science fiction than some of the writers. Pohl rapidly joined this number, and became a leader among the others.
He was part of the movement that led to the formation of the first great fan tradition—the annual World Science Fiction Convention. As much as any single person could be, he was a moving force in the organization of the very first one, held in 1939. (He didn't attend. There were feuds in those days that seemed earthshaking then, and he was too strong a fan not to take sides. Happily, those feuds are now dead, and ancient enemies are now the best of friends.)
Almost at once, he graduated to editing his own magazines. This came about before he was twenty-one. Somehow, despite a very low budget for his magazines, he managed to become a major editor, with magazines second only to the acknowledged and established leader. And when I visited New York City in those days to see John W. Campbell, the only other editor it occurred to me to see was Frederik Pohl.
He might have gone on with the magazines, but the war interrupted his career. And when he returned, he turned to another field. He opened an agency to handle the stories of other writers, and rapidly became one of the leading agents in science fiction, perhaps the leading one. His roster of clients read like a Who's Who of science fiction, from long-established professionals to beginners who were quickly promoted to stardom under his handling. I couldn't have issued the four magazines I was then editing without his service; his help to Horace L. Gold in the launching of Galaxy must have been beyond value.
It was partly as a result of his work as an agent that he returned to writing. He made a strong effort to bring back many of the writers who had dropped out of the field, among them his close friend, Cyril Kornbluth, who had begun under a number of pen names and had been one of the better young writers before the war, but had since abandoned all writing efforts. In persuading him to return to writing, Pohl discussed many ideas for stories with him. It was during these discussions that the idea of collaborating again came up, resulting in the novel, The Space Merchants.
As an agent, Pohl was also instrumental in steering many writers into the book field, where publishers were then just becoming interested in science fiction. Among the writers steered into this new market was Isaac Asimov. And Asimov benefited in this partly by the fact that Pohl was also still an active and important fan! There was an organization in New York called the Hydra Club which had been founded by Frederik Pohl and me in 1947, and the monthly meetings of this club were attended by most of the major writers and editors in the field at the time. It was at such a meeting that Pohl brought Isaac Asimov together with Walter Bradbury, editor for Doubleday; the result was a contract for the first of an incredible number of books by Asimov.
Eventually, the lure of writing proved more compelling than the work as an agent, and Pohl gave up his agency to become a full-time writer. He continued to collaborate with Kornbluth, but he began to work a great deal on his own. He also collaborated on two projects with me. I can't speak for other collaborators, but in my own case, Pohl contributed fully half of the writing and all the basic ideas, while taking only half the credit. But our work was so much rewritten back and forth, and so completely the result of constant rethinking that I can't even guess who was responsible for what, in most instances.
But our methods were so dissimilar that we both decided after the second attempt to abandon working together, financially successful though it had been. One lasting result, however, was that my wife Evelyn and I moved out to Red Bank, where we were always the closest of friends with Fred Pohl and his wife Carol during the next two decades.
Pohl also began a series of collaborations with Jack Williamson. It seemed an unlikely combination; Pohl's writing was accepted as somewhat sardonic and cynical (though that was an unfair judgment), while Williamson was noted for his extreme romantic euphoria about man in the future. Yet the collaboration worked well through three juvenile books and many adult serials.
Nothing ever went in a straight line in his career, however. Now that he was a successful author, it wasn't too surprising that he resumed his career as an editor. Horace L. Gold resigned as editor of Galaxy and If, and Pohl was immediately chosen as his successor.
Now he was editing two of the leading magazines in the field, with a competitive budget, quite different from his previous experience.
He proceeded to demonstrate just how good an editor he really was, and the results were quickly apparent, as he began discovering new talent and making full use of the old. Many of the leading authors today first appeared in his magazines—Niven and Tiptree, to name two quite dissimilar ones from a large group. The stories he printed won a majority of the Hugo awards in the succeeding years, and If was picked for the Hugo three successive years!
Then the magazines were sold to Universal Publishing and Distributing Corporation. Pohl was offered the chance to continue editing the magazines, but it would have meant full-time commuting to New York City, and he decided to go back to writing without editing. He felt there were rewards enough in that; rightly so, as it proved, since he was named as Guest of Honor by the World Science Fiction Convention in 1972 and won a Hugo for his writing in 1973—the only man to win that honor both for his writing and his editing.
There were a few other contributions during all this time, of course. He became one of the most sought lecturers on science fiction and the world of the future, addressing all sorts of groups and crusading for what science fiction had long been, but which was just being discovered by a wider audience. He helped enlarge that audience. He taught science fiction in schools for young writers. And he traveled widely (to both Russia and Japan, for instance) to deepen the international flavor of science fiction.
As I write this, he is again serving as an editor, this time as science fiction consultant for a large soft-cover book publishing house. And, happily, he is still writing some of the best science fiction to be found in books or magazines.
Lester del Rey
August 11, 1974