Frederik Pohl (1919–2013)

On June 15th, Guy Burckhardt wakes up in a panic after dreaming of an explosion. Realizing that all is well, he proceeds with his day, yet many of the usual people he encounters in his daily routine are either replaced or nowhere to be found. Worse, he is confronted by a number of obnoxious and aggressive advertisements for unfamiliar products. Burckhardt is ready to dismiss it all until the same thing happens the next day, which also happens to be June 15th. Perhaps there was an explosion after all?… (meer)

This is one of the classics of the genre during the early 50s (in fact, it was included in the Library of America omnibus American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels 1953-1956). I'll admit that I thought it was going to be about a trading spaceship visiting different planets, but it's nothing like that. The book is set in a near future (for the 50s) where humans live in a dystopian society, heavily controlled by corporations and where the environment is very deteriorated. In fact, environmentalists are considered social deviants and ruthlessly persecuted. A big corporation specializing in marketing buys the contract for the colonization of Venus (which in the book is a very inhospitable planet but not as much as we now know it to be). The first thing they need to do is create a marketing campaign to convince people that they want to volunteer as colonists. We follow the point of view of the executive in charge of this campaign. In the meantime, there are plots by commercial rivals and by an underground environmentalist organization that try to interfere.

One problem with SF written before the computer era is that the futures they depict fail to predict how ubiquitous computers have now become, and the implications for humanity. I do not really consider this a failure, because these people are writers, not fortune tellers, but when reading it it's true that nowadays we need to suspend disbelief in this sense and accept this "retrofuture" with no internet and no smartphones. Also, socially it's extrapolated from the 50s, so the marketing companies depicted work a bit like what we see in the Mad Men TV show.

Pohl did work as a marketing copy writer, so he knows his stuff and it shows. The dystopian element is also very relevant now, with echoes of Huxley's Brave New World. Unlike Brave New World, this novel adds a thriller/action plot, so it's not going to be considered respectable literature. It's well-written, and although it does have outdated elements I still thought it entertaining and worth-reading, particularly if you enjoy classic SF.… (meer)

I enjoyed it a lot.

It's the story of a life heavily influenced by his love for science fiction. As a kid, a copy of one of the very early pulp magazines (Hugo Gernsback's Wonder Stories, IIRC) got into his hands, and his mind was blown away. From then on, he was hopelessly hooked. We see him as a young fan in the 30's getting involved in the first attempts of fandom to establish contact and organize itself (remember, no internet then!). Fans actually first got in contact with each other through mail thanks to Hugo's magazine, since it printed a letter section that included the writers' addresses, and later it was Hugo Gernsback who, in an attempt to consolidate his audience, got the idea to encourage and organize fans through his magazine to form science fiction clubs (what he called the Science Fiction League). Young Fred Pohl took to that like a fish takes to water, and soon he became heavily involved in New York's nascent fandom.

Eventually, he and some other like-minded youngsters created their own club, the Futurians, many of whom became well-known SF writers and editors. It's all a rather fascinating look at how fandom started, and Pohl was usually at the best place to experience it all.

Still very young, he got a job as editor of a minor SF pulp magazine, and we get to see how that world worked too. Then he served in the army in WWII (by the time he was sent to Europe the war was finishing, so he didn't see combat). Later he became an agent for many of the most famous SF writers, and managed to get broke. Then he became a big-shot editor, editing for example the prestigious SF magazines Galaxy and If... All the time he was also writing when he could, and occasionally having some other jobs to pay the bills, and socializing with numerous famous people in science fiction.

Unfortunately, the book was published right before what probably was his most successful time as a writer, when he published big classics like Man Plus and Gateway. Nevertheless, it's a fascinating opportunity for anyone with an interest in the history of science fiction to hear from someone who was heavily involved and made many contributions. Pohl is not as funny when he tells anecdotes as Asimov, but he has his own gruff, self-deprecating humor and tells things in an entertaining manner.… (meer)