eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780252097744 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Illinois Press |
| Publication date: | 09/30/2015 |
| Series: | Modern Masters of Science Fiction |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 216 |
| File size: | 495 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Frederik Pohl
By Michael R. Page
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
Copyright © 2015 Board of Trustees of the University of IllinoisAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-252-09774-4
CHAPTER 1
THE WAY THE FUTURE WAS, 1930–1951
Like many of his young contemporaries in the early 1930s (and those generations to follow), when Frederik Pohl discovered science fiction at age ten in 1930, it was a revelation. At that time, science fiction as a defined category of fiction was only in its fifth year, although science fiction itself had a much longer pedigree. Hugo Gernsback launched the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, in April 1926, initially filling it with reprints of stories and novels by H. G. Wells, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, Abraham Merritt, and others, before establishing a group of new writers from the readers of the magazine, such as E. E. "Doc" Smith, Dr. Miles J. Breuer, Jack Williamson, and Harl Vincent. These were the writers whom the young Pohl encountered in the pages of Amazing and its rivals, Wonder Stories and Astounding Stories of Super-Science.
The first such magazine Pohl read was the Summer 1930 issue of Wonder Stories Quarterly, which entranced him with its cover illustration of a scaly green monster about to heave a giant boulder at two human explorers, illustrating "The Monsters of Neptune," by Henrik Dahl Juve. From there on, Pohl was hooked. A few months later he discovered another science fiction magazine, the 1927 Amazing Stories Annual, containing Edgar Rice Burroughs's novel The Master Mind of Mars. He read the Burroughs novel over and over again. This magazine, with a different title from the first and with a date a few years in the past, helped Pohl realize that there was more of this species of reading out there, and he began actively seeking it out at newsstands, used bookshops, and flea markets. He also received his first library card around this time from the Brooklyn Public Library, where he discovered books by Wells, Verne, Twain, Kipling, Poe, and other writers of the fantastic. But as his teens went on, he read widely also outside of the fantastic field, as most of his contemporaries did, encountering writers such as Dostoyevsky, Huysmans, Proust, Kant, and T. S. Eliot, for example. Pohl has written of the significance of the library: "When I was old enough to own a card in the public library the world opened up totally to me. I read everything I could put my hands on, out of the limitless resources of one of the largest library systems in the world." He later wrote, "The Brooklyn Public Library was, I think, the best thing that ever happened to me."
Closing out that first year of SF discovery, Pohl spent the summer of 1931 at his uncle's farm in Pennsylvania, where he found a collection of pulp magazines in the attic, mostly the general fiction pulp Argosy, which often published science fiction among its regular fare of Westerns, court room dramas, and adventures, but also a significant run of Weird Tales: "I remember a hot summer in my uncle's attic, smelling of salt and curing tobacco, where I found a treasure trove, twenty back years of Argosy and Weird Tales." In those Argosy issues Pohl read A. Merritt's The Moon Pool, SF novels by Ray Cummings (whom Pohl would later publish in Astonishing Stories ), and Otis Adelbert Kline.
In his book Age of Wonders David Hartwell famously observed that "the real golden age of science fiction" is age twelve, and this was certainly true of Pohl, who, between age ten and age twelve, managed to "read every scrap of science fiction I knew to exist." As Pohl was a rapid reader, averaging a book a day for most of his life, we can well imagine that he worked his way through a tremendous amount of what constituted the genre at the time. Pohl was already a voracious reader before he discovered science fiction and, like most kids, read countless tales of the fantastic. For instance, in an autobiographical sketch written for Contemporary Authors, Pohl claims that he "read every Tom Swift book in print" before age ten. Because they moved around frequently, Pohl was a lonely child whose "best friends were books." His reading set him apart from other children: "I perceived quite early that I was a reader, and most of the people I came in contact with were not. It made a barrier. What they wanted to talk about were things they had eaten, touched or done. What I wanted to talk about was what I had read. When it developed that what I was thinking and reading was more and more science fiction, the barrier grew."
As he read through the existing science fiction magazines, Pohl was particularly influenced by the satiric science fiction of Stanton Coblentz and David H. Keller: "That was there, in those ragged pulp magazines of four or five decades ago: social satire. It made a whole generation of us cynics and dreamers: cynics, because we could see the shoddiness of the now, dreamers, because at the same time other writers were offering us Utopias and magnificent challenges." Satire would become Pohl's calling card, from the early masterpiece The Space Merchants to his final novel All the Lives He Led. Pohl recalled another early pulp novel that "so enraptured" him that "the drug had been tasted and the addiction formed." That novel was Jack Williamson's The Stone from the Green Star, which appeared in the October and November 1931 issues of Amazing. Pohl and Williamson would later collaborate on ten novels and travel the world together. Reflecting on the nearly seventy years of their acquaintance, Pohl wrote, "I told him at one point I wanted to be as good a writer as he was. What I didn't tell him, although it was true, was that I wanted to be as good a person as Jack was."
Pohl's enthusiasm for science fiction reading was matched by an equal hunger for science fiction films — notably Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Invisible Man, and The Island of Lost Souls — and films in general. He estimated that he watched three or four movies a week, not counting repeats. Pohl recalled seeing his first science fiction film in 1930: "Just Imagine was the first science-fiction film I ever saw. I had barely discovered science fiction itself, and the revelation that it existed even in the movie theaters blew my mind."
Frederik Pohl was born on November 26, 1919, in New York City, just thirty-seven days before the reported birthdate of his contemporary and close friend Isaac Asimov. Pohl's father was a dreamer who was always looking for the next big financial opportunity, and when Frederik was born, his father had secured a job at the Panama Canal. Baby Fred spent his first Christmas at sea, as he and his mother traveled by steamer to meet his father. During Pohl's infancy his father continued to chase the next best thing, moving to Texas, New Mexico, and California over the ensuing few years. By the time Pohl was old enough to remember where he was, they were back in Brooklyn. Even in Brooklyn, the Pohls moved from apartment to apartment; Pohl suspected that it was because they couldn't pay the rent. Sometimes he would have to stay with relatives until his father could get the finances sorted out again. Like many other notable science fiction figures (Robert Silverberg, Raymond Palmer, Jo Walton), Pohl suffered from childhood illness, and his mother kept him out of school until he was eight years old. Instead, encouraged by his mother, he read, developing his early appetite for reading, an aptitude to read quickly, and a sharp mind for retention. So by the time Pohl attended school, he was already ahead of the class and found the work to be insipidly boring.
His father left when Pohl was eleven, shortly after Pohl discovered SF, and his parents divorced amicably when he was thirteen. This may have played a role in Pohl's seeking out male companionship among other science fiction fans. Eventually, his father would finally come upon some prosperity, running a successful manufacturing plant, though his financial fortunes would continue to go up and down. The manufacturing entrepreneur in the mainstream novel A Town is Drowning, written with Cyril Kornbluth, is likely drawn from Pohl's father, as are some of the science fictionalized factory scenes in stories such as The Space Merchants and "The Waging of the Peace."
Like many young science fiction enthusiasts, Pohl began writing his own stories and dreamed of the day when his work would appear in the magazines. He attempted his first SF story in his eighth grade English class. Needless to say, his teacher did not approve. In that same class, a fellow student introduced him to another new science fiction magazine, Astounding Stories of Super-Science, loaning him the June 1931 issue, which featured Arthur J. Burks's "Manape the Mighty."
Pohl entered high school at Brooklyn Tech in the fall of 1932. Tech was a new school (in old buildings) created to produce young technologists and scientists — the kind of science-oriented young men and women that Hugo Gernsback was championing in his magazines. A quick study, Pohl would read the school textbooks in the first week of class and then otherwise be bored the rest of the semester. At Brooklyn Tech Pohl met another science fiction enthusiast named Harry Dockweiler, who would later change his name to Dirk Wylie. Dockweiler was the first person like himself whom Pohl had encountered, and they became best friends, spending their time discussing science fiction while roaming the city, walking for hours and stealing rides on the subway: "School could not compete. Outside it we were learning the world." The world was changing, and Pohl could see it changing all around him as he explored the city. Science and technology were coming to the forefront, and this was evident in the urban environment.
* * *
Pohl's discovery of science fiction, his enthusiastic reading of everything he could get his hands on, and his friendship with another young science fiction enthusiast in Dockweiler paralleled the development of science fiction fandom and culture. In fact, Pohl was among the prominent foundational figures in fan culture. By the time Pohl was fourteen years old, science fiction fandom was about to take shape.
To boost magazine sales and promote the growing youth culture surrounding science fiction, Hugo Gernsback launched the Science Fiction League in the May 1934 issue of Wonder Stories. According to fan historian Sam Moskowitz, the Science Fiction League created the fan field by coalescing it, forming a community of the disparate youths across the country and in Britain who were avidly reading science fiction. Pohl signed up immediately; nevertheless, his membership number was 490. He joined the Brooklyn chapter, headed by a man named G. G. Clark, who was member number 1 of the SFL and had received the personal imprimatur of Gernsback himself to form the club. The kids who joined, however, found the older Clark to be somewhat stiff, and they would often hold their own "meeting after the meeting" at a nearby soda fountain.
As science fiction fans gathered in the clubs set up by Gernsback, they began exchanging their fanzines. The Brooklyn Science Fiction League published their proceedings in a small, mimeographed publication called the Brooklyn Reporter. This was the first science fiction fanzine that Pohl was involved with; though not the first fanzine, it was the first to emerge from organized fandom. These early fanzines contained stories and poems by fans and pros, reviews of each new issue of Amazing, Wonder, and Astounding, gossip about what was happening in the world of science fiction, and political debate among fans. The fanzines were the gateway to professional writing and editing for many SF fans, including Pohl. And they were the foundations for professional SF criticism, a legacy for books such as this one; for instance, Damon Knight and James Blish published their early criticism in fanzines. In a recent article in Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, film critic Roger Ebert, who had been an active science fiction fan in the 1950s, claimed, "It was in the virtual world of science fiction fandom that I started to learn to be a writer and a critic." Ebert further compares the fanzines and fan culture to an early paper version of the internet: "Fanzines were web pages before there was a web.... Someday an academic will write a study proving that the style, tone, and much of the language of the online world developed in a direct linear fashion from science fiction fandom." This virtual network of contacts and critical writing through fanzines was consistent with Pohl's experience, as he honed his writing skills by writing critical reviews and commentary and editing others' work, and made contact with science fiction fans across the country, including Robert Lowndes, a youngster from Connecticut who would eventually move to New York and become one of Pohl's closest companions.
The power dynamic of the BSFL was soon to change when Donald Wollheim and John Michel joined the group. Though Wollheim was only nineteen years old and Michel seventeen, both were published writers: Wollheim's first story had appeared in the January 1934 issue of Wonder Stories, and Michel shared a byline with Raymond Z. Gallun in the Summer 1932 issue of Wonder Stories Quarterly. The fourteen-year-old Pohl was starstruck. These guys were pros. Wollheim and Michel had come to the BSFL meeting to announce that Gernsback was not paying writers, a charge Gernsback and other pulp editors had faced before, and they were mad. This led to the first schism in fandom, as Wollheim proposed that all members of the Science Fiction League should assert their independence by seceding from affiliation with Gernsback, form their own clubs, and proclaim loudly the misdeeds of Gernsback in fan publications. This kind of rough-and-tumble fan politicking appealed to Pohl, who, like Wollheim, liked to stir things up. The group soon split, with Pohl, Dockweiler, and others joining Wollheim and Michel, leaving the Gernsback loyalist Clark. With Wollheim and Michel, Pohl formed the East New York Science Fiction League and then joined the International Scientific Association, where they connected with a fan named Will Sykora. As documented in several letters in the Wollheim Archive in the Spencer Library at the University of Kansas, after only a few months, Pohl, Wollheim, and Michel squabbled with Sykora over the club's finances, publications, leadership, and politics. By April 1937, following defections by the triumvirate, Sykora resigned the presidency and Wollheim briefly seized power long enough to dissolve the ISA. These fan wars, which have been chronicled in Sam Moskowitz's The Immortal Storm, Harry Warner Jr.'s All Our Yesterdays, Damon Knight's The Futurians, and elsewhere, shaped the genre, and Pohl's presence on the front lines are central to that development.
As Pohl's career in fandom continued in the latter half of the 1930s, he demonstrated a penchant for editorial work, editing a number of publications for the fan groups he was part of, including such titles as Mind of Man, Flabbergasting Stories, and the International Observer. This capacity for editorial work would be important for Pohl's later career in the field, first when he became the editor of two magazines at age nineteen — Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories — and later when he edited the first original anthology series for Ballantine Books, Star Science Fiction, succeeded Horace Gold as editor of Galaxy and If in the 1960s, and held the post of science fiction editor at Bantam during the 1970s.
After the collapse of the ISA, Pohl and his friends continued to shape the world of science fiction through their fan activities, and by late 1937 their group began to coalesce into what they eventually called the Futurians, which would become the most significant fan group in science fiction history. Along with Pohl, the original members included Isaac Asimov, Donald Wollheim, Cyril Kornbluth, Robert Lowndes, David Kyle, Richard Wilson, Dirk Wylie, John Michel, and other less notable names. In later years, James Blish (who had been a member of the ISA), Judith Merril, Damon Knight, Virginia Kidd, and Hannes Bok were members. Among this group are several of the most important writers and editors of the genre. The first official meeting of the Futurian Science Literary Society was held on September 18, 1938. On September 15, Isaac Asimov received a postcard from Pohl inviting him to the meeting. Of that first meeting, Asimov wrote in his diary:
I attended the first meeting of the Futurians and boy! did I have a good time. Attending likewise were such famous fans as Don A. Wollheim, John Michel, Frederik Pohl, "Doc" Lowndes.... We enjoyed a three-hour session of strict parliamentary discipline.... This was a meeting of organization in which we settled details, adopted a constitution, elected officers, and so on. Next time, we will proceed to the business of speeches, debates, and so on.... After the meeting we all went down to an ice-cream parlor.... There I had an uproarious time.... They all know me from my letters to Astounding and Amazing and I got along famously.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Frederik Pohl by Michael R. Page. Copyright © 2015 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.