I just heard that Fred Pohl has died.
He was, for me, the last of the Golden Age greats, the first generation of Science Fiction Writers who created the genre. His collaborations with Cyril Kornbluth, his later solo work, were wonderful things: always witty, smart, interested in how people worked and how the stuff of the future would change the people who inhabited it. (I started with The Space Merchants, a book about advertising in a 1950s future. It's still my favourite.)
He was a literary agent too, and a whip-sharp editor of magazines and books. He stayed smart and he stayed relevant. Samuel R. Delany's groundbreaking Dhalgren was published as a Fred Pohl selection, and became a bestseller. And Fred kept on writing, and even blogging, giving us his memories of his past in science fiction. (Here's his blog entry on Dhalgren.)
I met him briefly at conventions, but never really knew him (I know his wife, Betty, Elizabeth Anne Hull, much better -- we spent time together in China, for a start). I told him how much I owed him, and how much the world of Science Fiction owed him, and I'm glad I did. I told him I saw him interviewed, when I was a boy, in a BBC documentary on SF writers, and it helped make it real that the things I loved were actually being made by real human beings.
The world is emptier without him, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction really has passed away.
...
This is a poem I wrote for Gateways, an anthology tribute to Fred, published a few years ago, about the futures that he and his Golden Age friends had promised us or threatened us with, about the future we seemed to have received instead:
He was, for me, the last of the Golden Age greats, the first generation of Science Fiction Writers who created the genre. His collaborations with Cyril Kornbluth, his later solo work, were wonderful things: always witty, smart, interested in how people worked and how the stuff of the future would change the people who inhabited it. (I started with The Space Merchants, a book about advertising in a 1950s future. It's still my favourite.)
He was a literary agent too, and a whip-sharp editor of magazines and books. He stayed smart and he stayed relevant. Samuel R. Delany's groundbreaking Dhalgren was published as a Fred Pohl selection, and became a bestseller. And Fred kept on writing, and even blogging, giving us his memories of his past in science fiction. (Here's his blog entry on Dhalgren.)
I met him briefly at conventions, but never really knew him (I know his wife, Betty, Elizabeth Anne Hull, much better -- we spent time together in China, for a start). I told him how much I owed him, and how much the world of Science Fiction owed him, and I'm glad I did. I told him I saw him interviewed, when I was a boy, in a BBC documentary on SF writers, and it helped make it real that the things I loved were actually being made by real human beings.
The world is emptier without him, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction really has passed away.
...
This is a poem I wrote for Gateways, an anthology tribute to Fred, published a few years ago, about the futures that he and his Golden Age friends had promised us or threatened us with, about the future we seemed to have received instead:
The
[Backspace] Merchants
The
[backspace] merchants sell deletions and removals,
masters
of the world (or so they claim)
they go
by many hundred different names
and live
inside a giant block of Spam.
It
quivers, as if alive, is fed
by tubes
and tendrils, and is inhabited.
Portions
are cut from it continually to feed the people.
Insidious,
invidious,
(occasionally
in videos),
the
[backspace] merchants seek to sell you:
V1agRa
and all its magical cousins
(If
you had a larger thing in your pants your life would have been
better!!)
(MAGIC
PENIS ENLARGEMENT PILLS)
(She'll
love the new growth!)
(Make
nights turbulent.)
Also,
designer watches, diplomas,
diplomats
who will entrust you with their missing millions.
There
are girls in your town who want to
meet
you.
The
[backspace] merchants want so to delete you.
The
[backspace] merchants click and they erase
our
faces, so we keep on losing face.
The
[backspace] merchants
offer
relief from their own excesses:
The
products will not work as advertised
The Spam
is vast and must be satisfied.
In
the old days of the future
our
freedom fighters lived deep inside the chicken meat
Their
coffee was the coffiest, their dreams the dreamiest.
The rest
of us craved and grazed our lives away
and
wondered if we should emigrate to Venus.
These
are the poles we navigate between:
Yesterday's
futures now reshape our days
into
futures past, somewhere between last week and day million
as
ancient as a black and white TV show, watched so late
and all
the names we conjured with appeared to us in monochrome
with
their faces, such young faces,
to those
of us who would learn to be plugged in at all times,
they
told us of the future, that it was what they saw
a Game
of If when they opened wide their eyes.
So
we avoided all their awful warnings,
ignored
the minefields as the klaxons sounded
played
“Cheat the Prophet” just as Gilbert said,
we
sidestepped cacotopias unbounded
and
built ourselves this gorgeous mess instead
I
wish we could still emigrate to Venus.
Sometimes
I wonder what the Spam makes of us:
does it
define us by our base desires,
or hope
we can transcend them? Like small gods,
the
[backspace] merchants offer us all choices
and each
day
we can
be tempted
or
delete.
They lay
their traps ineptly at our feet.
The
present moves so quick we can't describe it,
so
Science Fiction limns the recent past.
We
future folk are just another tribe who
hyperlinked
our colours to the mast,
When now is
always then and never soon
Our
freak flags will not fly upon the moon.
Our
prophets opened gateways, showed us pitfalls
gave us
worlds of if and galaxies uncountable.
They
made us think then take the other road.
But
future yesterdays are growing cold.
The
[backspace] merchants huddle in their meat
while we
demand a finer, nobler future:
It waits
for us beyond the blue horizon.
Our
future will be glorious and gold.
If
it lasts more than four hours
consult
your physician.
For
Fred Pohl, with infinite admiration.
.....................................................................................................
I'm still hiding out, still recovering from the three months on tour, still writing. Today I mostly went for a walk in the mist, cooked in the Aga, and wrote.
The world looked like this on the walk. (There are predictions that the sun will come out on Thursday, but I'm in no hurry. I'm good with the mist and the drizzle.)
(I can email photos like this over to WhoSay, which autoposts them to Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter. Expect more of them.)
And I found myself on the TV News today (people phoned and told me). I talked about the role of libraries in the world in a piece on the opening of the new Birmingham Library - the largest lending library in Europe. You may (or may not, depending on where you live) be able to watch it here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23869169 and http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b039109j/BBC_News_at_Six_02_09_2013/?t=25m35s.
Okay. I should go to sleep.
(Oh. I nearly forgot. A wonderful diary piece by Philip Pullman in the Financial Times about many things, including our time on stage. Yes, buy his wonderful Grimm Tales, out now in paperback.)
(And if you've ever wanted to hear Stephen Colbert read a chilling Ray Bradbury story and Leonard Nimoy read my favourite hilarious James Thurber short story, go to Selected Shorts http://www.selectedshorts.org/2013/08/dreams-and-schemes/: I host this episode.)
(And if you've ever wanted to hear Stephen Colbert read a chilling Ray Bradbury story and Leonard Nimoy read my favourite hilarious James Thurber short story, go to Selected Shorts http://www.selectedshorts.org/2013/08/dreams-and-schemes/: I host this episode.)
Labels: Frederick Pohl, Mist, The Space Merchants