Oh, damn. We say the good die young, because for some people ninety-plus years just isn’t long enough. From io9:
One of the leading lights of the science fiction world, editor and author Frederik Pohl, passed away this weekend after a career that defined the genre for decades…
Pohl was known for his mind-bending, often satirical novels (many co-authored with longtime collaborator C.M. Kornbluth), his editing acumen, his science fiction criticism, and his witty, fascinating blog, which he was updating right up until his death…
Pohl was one of the founders of the influential, progressive group the Futurians in the 1930s. At a time when a lot of scifi was embracing its pulpiest tendencies, the Futurians argued that science fiction could be both literary and politically relevant. With The Space Merchants, he proved his point. And in later novels like Gladiator-at-Law (with Kornbluth) and Gateway, he continued to write dark, satiric tales of futures defined by class conflict and corporate greed….
As an editor, Pohl was known for taking risks on science fiction that broke out of the Golden Age adventure mold. In the 1960s, while working at Bantam, he published Samuel Delany’s classic Dhalgren, and Joanna Russ’ foundational feminist work The Female Man…
He wrote a memoir called The Way the Future Was, which also became the name for his long-running blog, The Way the Future Blogs.
We will miss Pohl, both for championing great works of science fiction and for writing some of the best works of the twentieth century. His career is a reminder that sometimes the greatest contributions to the genre came from collaboration and community-building, as well as the solitary work that’s done at the keyboard….
My gateway into Fred Pohl’s world was Slave Ship, which the 1969 edition Ballentine paperback describes thusly: “… The nature of animals is that they are expendable. When a prolonged ‘cold’ war has created a manpower shortage so acute that Boy Scouts are being drafted, the Navy, characteristically resourceful, turns to other available material. To an Annapolis graduate, veteran of several ‘cold’ strikes himself, a serious-minded man willing to do anything the Navy expects of him, this presents problems in ethics only surmounted by the baffling confusion of the T.O. of his command… “ It is a short book, and probably unreprintable except as a curiosity, but it remains, IMO, a demonstration in miniature of Pohl at his best — a man more interested in “ordinary” people, middle managers, guys doing a job of work, than in Great Thinkers leading the March of History. He expected to be surprised, and delighted, by Tha Future… but he assumed that future would still be peopled by distinct individuals, each more concerned with getting through the daily round than with Very Important Concepts, because it’s the billions of minute decisions in everybeing’s daily round that end up shaping those VICs.
If you’re at all interested in sf/fantasy and you haven’t read The Way the Future Was, it’s not just a useful slice of history, it’s an introduction to the mindset of a man who never outgrew being delighted in the new and different. And it’s been a while since I read it, but IIRC, he was also very good discussing how humans in groups interact, and the hard work involved in keeping even small, intimate groups of humans intact and functional…
Oh, and speaking of these here internets, his Wikipedia entry includes the line:
Pohl’s Law is either “No one is ever ready for anything” or “Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere will not hate it”
.
(h/t JeffreyW)
Haydnseek
Fred Pohl was an absolute giant. He didn’t just change the shape of SF, he changed the way everyone that cared, and some that didn’t, thought about SF. I treasure every volume of his I own.
SiubhanDuinne
SF is not really my genre (don’t hate on me, bro!!) but I am well aware of Frederik Pohl’s contributions. As many years as he had in an earthsuit, he shed it too soon. R.I.P.
Viva BrisVegas
First Jack Vance, now Fred Pohl. Once giants walked the Earth, now they are gone.
J R in WV
I guess I should get used to losing the giants that I was used to having around – I’ve reached the age where even my friends are apt to die suddenly.
At least the young brat and superstar writer, John Scalzi just won his first Hugo – so there are coming young giants to look forward to.
But Pohl was a true genius, I’m sad to see him gone…
Emma
Damn. Damn. Damn. I love his short stories. Love them.
Haydnseek
@J R in WV: I love Scalzi as well.
MikeJ
Where is my goddamned pony?
SiubhanDuinne
@J R in WV:
I
I hate to tell you, but the older you get the more frequently it happens — with friends/contemporaries, relatives, and cultural touchstones from an earlier stage of your life. The other side of that is that, although you feel sad, even grieved, there is not the overwhelming sense of vast loss that happens when you (as survivor) are much younger. At least that’s true for me, have no idea if it’s universal.
max
Bummer.
but he assumed that future would still be peopled by distinct individuals, each more concerned with getting through the daily round than with Very Important Concepts, because it’s the billions of minute decisions in everybeing’s daily round that end up shaping those VICs.
Well, he was a leftie. Which might be why he tends not to be listed with the masters (which is, of course, just wrong). Only Asimov got to be the token liberal (Art Clarke was British so that doesn’t count as far I can tell).
My gateway into Fred Pohl’s world was Slave Ship,
I think the first Pohl I read was Man Plus (although I have a copy of Slave Ship down in the basement). I think my personal favorite would have to be Gladiator-at-Law and it was still perfectly good when I reread it a year or two ago. Although the The Merchants’ War & Jem & Gateway were pretty damned good as well.
max
[‘Black Star Rising is too pointedly political to be a great novel, although it’s still a good book.’]
Sir Laffs-a-lot
This years Hugos:
http://bandofthebes.typepad.com/bandofthebes/2013/09/hugo-award-winners-scalzis-redshirts-is-best-novel.html
Haydnseek
@SiubhanDuinne: Funny you should mention this. I’ve been giving this a lot of thought lately. I’m of that age (I will be 62 soon) but so far no surprises. The deaths seem to be happening in their time, and so while not easy, they
are at least understandable with regard to the normal progression from birth to death. I was at a get-together recently when a good friend of mine, apropos to the topic we were discussing, asked me how old my father was when he died. I said: “He was 89. Cut down in his prime.”
Villago Delenda Est
The Space Merchants is positively frightening in its prescience.
He and Kornbluth utterly nailed corporatist consumer culture with that. The way to insure future sales is to make your product physically addictive! Yeah, that’s the ticket!
raven
@Haydnseek: You’re 2 year younger than me. I assume you didn’t have a lot of friends die from 1966-1970?
Tehanu
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yes, that’s what’s scary about it, the prescience. Good to know, in a way, that even back in the triumphalist mid-century some people saw exactly what unchecked capitalists could and would do.
Haydnseek
@raven: No, I didn’t. I was in high school from 1966 to 1969. The friends who went to Viet Nam in various capacities (I’m assuming that’s what you’re referring to) came home in one piece, at least physically. I’m still in touch with some of them. Interestingly enough, upon arrival back in the world, most of them were active in VVAW. Through them, I was introduced to Ron Kovic after a speech he gave at Broadway Park in Uptown Whittier. I’ll never forget it. An American hero, IMHO.
Haydnseek
@efgoldman: Just read an interview with Harlan Ellison. Quarlo No Peep.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: Or in the early 1980’s?
raven
@Haydnseek: I ran into him in a bookstore in Hermosa Beach some years back.The guy running the store was a Nam Vet too and recognized him. The three us us shot the shit for a while and the bookstore dude said something about how we got shafter and Ron said, “yea but I rarely here vets talk about what they gained from it”. It thought that was pretty cool. Tomorrow is the 44th Anniversary of my homecoming and of Ho’s death so it’s been on my mind.
raven
@Gin & Tonic: The last ten years have taken a toll on the friends I have that didn’t back off the alcohol.
raven
@Haydnseek: ETA, I lived in Whittier from 58 to 62. My old man coached at Cal High.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: I was referring to the early days of AIDS. I guess that depended on where you lived, but it hit the same age group hard.
Haydnseek
I think I might have mentioned it before, but I think you would really like the book “Valley of Death” by Ted Morgen. Detailed history of Dien Bien Phu and our entrance into the war, interesting insights on Ho. Sincere congratulations on the anniversary. Skritch a pup on the head for me!
raven
@Gin & Tonic: Ah, i see.
Botsplainer
Has anybody watched BSG: The Plan? It isn’t on Netflix streaming, and I wonder if its worth 8 bucks on iTunes.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: Ho’s monument/mausoleum/whatever is just so … weird. You can’t help but imagine it’s the last thing on Earth he would have wanted, if even half of his history is true.
Narcissus
This is depressing. The Heechee Saga is my favorite sci-fi universe to think about.
JW
Another one gone.
raven
@Haydnseek: Oh, that looks good. The Anderson Platoon was a documentary by Pierre Schoendoerffer who was also a Dien Bein Phu Vet. He said he made the film because he felt the French were responsible for getting us into that bullshit.
raven
@Gin & Tonic: I ran across this band in the spring, Good Graeff. Twins who lived in Hanoi for a couple of years hangin out and playing music. It seemed so interesting to me that they did that.
Haydnseek
@raven: Yep, I remember you talking about it. Did you know there was a Nike missile base up there somewhere? A friend of mine bought a beat up old surplus jeep and we were screwing around on the trails in the Whittier Hills, and suddenly we were confronted by some very serious personnel in a much nicer jeep. They had guns. They had attitude. We had reverse gear. I’m sure the Nike base was long since de-activated, but it made for a nice line of bullshit later on when we were telling the story. To this day I don’t know what was really going on up there………..
RobertDSC-PowerMac G5 Dual
My first book of his was Chernobyl, a fictional telling of the events of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. It was fantastic. RIP.
raven
@Haydnseek: Dang! Are they the same as the Puente Hills. When I was a kind we’d park in the Whittier College lot and take the 22’s up in those hills. My mom and her parents are buried in Rose Hills.
Haydnseek
@raven: He’s partly right. The French were fishing for us, and we jumped into the boat…….
Botsplainer
Oh, good god. Worst interim government ever in BSG. Roslin is flexing muscles she doesn’t have, and Adama is letting her do it. She sounds like an NPR version of the ideal president.
It isn’t like Adama has to worry about the civilians as taxpayers or as having anything necessary for continuing operations.
raven
@Haydnseek: Yea, I know, Bernard Fall was pretty clear on that. Proly the only book I have’t read s the one you cited. It’s ordered now.
Citizen_X
@MikeJ: Heh. I read that and I thought, “Pohl’s Law? I thought that was the Balloon Juice Law!”
Haydnseek
@raven: When you crest the Whittier Hills, they become the Puente Hills on the other side (Hacienda Heights, Industry, etc.) My girlfriend and I used to live at the end of the cul-de-sac on Kimbark Ave. right off of Workman Mill. I used to try and take photos of the Rio Hondo library with my longest lens from the patio. Rio Hondo holds a special place in my heart. Think 1970 to 1972. Oh, what a mighty time!
SiubhanDuinne
@Haydnseek: That is a great line and wonderful sentiment, “89 and cut down in his prime.” My mother died at age 58, same age as her own father was when he died — both of cardiovascular disease. (With that family patterning as history, little wonder that I had a heart attack shortly after my own 58th birthday!) Recently (I mentioned it here), a cousin — and not even a blood relative, but a third-cousin-once-removed-in-law — died very suddenly at age almost 87. He really was cut down in his prime, I miss him more than I would have expected, and I have to say I was more torn up by his death than by a lot of other people who have shuffled off in the past several years, elders and contemporaries as well as younger than me (I am 71).
ETA As happens so often these days, I’m being blacklisted nearly every time I try to post a comment. It’s too frustrating, so I’m going to sign off and go read a book.
raven
@Haydnseek: Aha, obviously I was long gone. We live on Rufus across from the grade school a few blocks from Stater Brothers.
eta Wow, I had no idea what Rio Hondo was till I looked at the map. I also didn’t know there was a dump next to where my mom is buried>:(
Haydnseek
@raven: I enjoyed it immensely. The research is amazing, yet it’s very readable. Whoever disses the French military doesn’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.
BH in MA
My gateway was Gateway, borrowed from a friend in high school around 1980 or so. Loved it so much I re-read it immediately.
CaseyL
The old Titans die and are succeeded by new Titans.
RIP, Mr. Pohl. You had a good long run. Thank you for the stories you told, and the universes you created to tell them in.
raven
@Haydnseek: Check this Anthony Quinn flick
Lost Command
This is a retelling of a part of the Algerian War for Independence which ate like a cancer at the French body politic. For reasons best left to French historians, the Fourth Republic of France when it was created after World War II, decided to reassert it’s sovereignty over its colonial possessions. France was then involved with a whole lot of brushfire wars in its colonies.
The film opens actually in French Indochina at the Battle of Dienbienphu where the French got themselves surrounded and the guerrillas they had been fighting for years came out in the open. Among others surrendering was Anthony Quinn’s regiment of paratroopers which included the unit historian Alain Delon and George Segal an Algerian Moslem serving in the French army.
sm*t cl*de
Buggery bollocks.
Pohl was updating his blog right up to the last moment.
I rate for “Wolfsbane”.
Yatsuno
@CaseyL: May his energy go peacefully into the universe.
Haydnseek
@raven: My old boss lived on Rufus. He would buy pay-per-view fights (Holmes-Ali, etc.) then invite us over for a BBQ. Good guy. There Is an enormous county landfill not far from Rose Hills, but Rose Hills bought so much land back when it was cheap that there’s still a big buffer zone between them and the dump.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: Smallish but seemingly pretty active expat community in Hanoi, an interesting city these days. Still cheap, I guess. Just too f’ing hot for me.
Haydnseek
@raven: Thanks! I’m on it…….
raven
@Gin & Tonic: There’s a dude from Athens that has lived there the better part of 25 years working in various projects to help war victims.
this Good Graeff video was shot in Hanoi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehRVSKqvg_g
mdblanche
Now I’m sad I didn’t realize that he was still around until now.
His short story “Earth Eighteen” was one of the funniest things I’ve ever read.
Mandalay
@Ann Laurie:
That quote is true and timely; I’ve just been reading about a 64 year old woman who swam from Cuba to Key West and set a new swimming distance record. Posters are crawling out of the woodwork to criticize her.
I don’t agree with isolationists or home schoolers or Jihadists or homophobes, but I think I understand where they are coming from. But folks who would take the time and trouble to dump on the remarkable achievement of a long distance swimmer completely mystify me. WTF?
Yatsuno
@Mandalay:
Haters gotta hate. For a lot of them it’s all they got.
OGLiberal
Took a science fiction course in college (English minor) and one of the titles was Gateway. Probably the best of the bunch, and other titles included ones from Le Guin (Left Hand of Darkness) and Heinlein (Puppet Masters). Yeah, they are the works you’d expect from each author but was always impressed that my relatively small university offered a course where the required reading included all three (among others). Never was a big sci-fi guy before the course,beyond watching Star Trek and the original Star Wars trilogy, and haven’t read much since but I did enjoy the exposure to the classics.
celticdragonchick
@Viva BrisVegas:
We lost Anne McCaffrey a year ago as well.
Xenos
Iain Banks, too. Far too soon, and I did not start reading him until a few years ago. The world I was born into is slipping away, and what I miss most are the genre fiction writers who caught my attention when I was 14. Holy shit, I am turning 50 soon, and better get ready.
Thanks for the posts, Anne. Some of us out here in the internet really need them.
doug r
Loved Gateway.
Linkmeister
@mdblanche: I hope his blog‘s archives will be left up for a while. He kept telling stories there, but they were non-fictional historical accounts of his contemporaries and his experiences agenting and publishing. They were fascinating stories of the travails of mid-century magazine editors.
Matt McIrvin
@max: During the time I was reading a huge number of SF novels, I never thought of Pohl as in the same cohort as Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke and Heinlein simply because (as we’re discussing over on James Nicoll’s LiveJournal) he did some of his best work in the 1970s and 1980s, and that stuff never read like a relic of an earlier age; it was completely contemporary in style. So I thought he was younger.
Joey Maloney
I want to recognize the passing here, back in April, of andrew j. offutt, which I didn’t even hear about until today. He was not a giant like Pohl, but one of the journeymen of sf and several other genres, and a really interesting person and excellent drinking partner.
Paul in KY
@raven: Street without Joy is the seminal work on Dien Bien Phu.