Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category
March 30th, 2010
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Author: Living in a world of late-night talk show hosts “interviewing” celebrities and novelty acts, and cable news talking heads “interviewing” politicians and lobbyists, most people aren’t familiar with the art of the interview.
For nearly 50 years The Paris Review has been publishing some of the best, most in-depth and insightful author interviews in the English language.
In an idle moment this morning I wondered if those interviews are available online. It turns out that some are and some aren’t.
“In November 2006, the first volume of a four-book set of The Paris Review Interviews was celebrated by reviewers across the English-speaking world. In tandem with this publishing project, we offer here online a complete index of every interview ever published, searchable by author and by date—as well as a substantial sampling of the archive’s finest interviews, posted in their entirety.”
Ralph Ellison’s complete interview is online. Borges isn’t.
William Burroughs’ complete interview is online. Henry Miller’s interview is available, but Donald Barthelme is not.
I love these interviews. Especially the earlier ones. Many of the early interviews describe the writer’s work space, which I find fascinating, and ask about working habits, also fascinating.
Here’s J. G. Ballard on writing a novel -
“Writing a novel is one of those modern rites of passage, I think, that lead us from an innocent world of contentment, drunkenness, and good humor, to a state of chronic edginess and the perpetual scanning of bank statements. By the eighteenth book, one has a sense of having bricked oneself into a niche, a roosting place for other people’s pigeons. I wouldn’t recommend it.”
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Living in a world of late-night talk show hosts “interviewing” celebrities and novelty acts, and cable news talking heads “interviewing” politicians and lobbyists, most people aren’t familiar with the art of the interview.
For nearly 50 years The Paris Review has been publishing some of the best, most in-depth and insightful author interviews in the English language.
In an idle moment this morning I wondered if those interviews are available online. It turns out that some are and some aren’t.
“In November 2006, the first volume of a four-book set of The Paris Review Interviews was celebrated by reviewers across the English-speaking world. In tandem with this publishing project, we offer here online a complete index of every interview ever published, searchable by author and by date—as well as a substantial sampling of the archive’s finest interviews, posted in their entirety.”
Ralph Ellison’s complete interview is online. Borges isn’t.
William Burroughs’ complete interview is online. Henry Miller’s interview is available, but Donald Barthelme is not.
I love these interviews. Especially the earlier ones. Many of the early interviews describe the writer’s work space, which I find fascinating, and ask about working habits, also fascinating.
Here’s J. G. Ballard on writing a novel -
“Writing a novel is one of those modern rites of passage, I think, that lead us from an innocent world of contentment, drunkenness, and good humor, to a state of chronic edginess and the perpetual scanning of bank statements. By the eighteenth book, one has a sense of having bricked oneself into a niche, a roosting place for other people’s pigeons. I wouldn’t recommend it.”
Here’s a half hour doc about maker culture.
Makers – A short-subject documentary about the Do-It-Yourself Counterculture (click through to see a larger, higher-res version)
Makers – A short-subject documentary about the Do-It-Yourself Counterculture from Brian Boyko on Vimeo.
Makers is a short subject documentary, filmed at Austin’s Maker Faire, 2007, about the people behind the do-it-yourself counterculture and their inventions.
You’ll see a life-sized MouseTrap game, a live performance of the EepyBird Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments, and some amazing footage of inventions of all shapes and sizes – some of them going wrong in unpredictable and dangerous ways. Featuring Adam Savage
Makers is the first project of Blogphilo New Media. All subjects are filmed with full permission.
For information on how to obtain a DVD copy, a High Definition copy, or for information about distribution rights for broadcast or inclusion in a larger work, contact Brian Boyko, the producer and director, at brian.boyko@blogphilo.com
If you would like to use a clip from Makers in your own projects, the movie is available to NON-COMMERCIAL projects under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Commercial entities looking at obtaining the rights to sample or incorporate the work should contact brian.boyko@blogphilo.com
I would be interested in turning this project into a feature-length film if funded. I believe there’s much more to be uncovered.
Running Time: 26:40, Format: 1024×576 pixels (can be squeezed to PAL anamorphic)
Filmed on HDV, Canon HV20, post-production in Apple Final Cut Pro.
(Thanks, LB!)
***
Cory Doctorow reads from his book Makers. Most of his talk is about the importance of fighting corporate-driven intellectual property laws like ACTA. Reads for 10 minutes, speaks for half an hour and then takes questions.
(Robert Sheckley is one of my all-time favorite writers. This story was published in Galaxy Magazine December, 1952 and the copyright was never renewed so it has fallen into the public domain. The illustration is by EMSH aka Ed Emshwiller. This is a story about carelessly going into so much debt that it will take several generations of descendants to pay it all off. I hope you enjoy it.)
If easy payment plans were
to be really efficient, patrons’
lifetimes had to be extended!
Carrin decided that he could trace his present mood to Miller’s suicide last week. But the knowledge didn’t help him get rid of the vague, formless fear in the back of his mind. It was foolish. Miller’s suicide didn’t concern him.
But why had that fat, jovial man killed himself? Miller had had everything to live for—wife, kids, good job, and all the marvelous luxuries of the age. Why had he done it?
“Good morning, dear,” Carrin’s wife said as he sat down at the breakfast table.
“Morning, honey. Morning, Billy.”
His son grunted something.
You just couldn’t tell about people, Carrin decided, and dialed his breakfast. The meal was gracefully prepared and served by the new Avignon Electric Auto-cook.
His mood persisted, annoyingly enough since Carrin wanted to be in top form this morning. It was his day off, and the Avignon Electric finance man was coming. This was an important day.
He walked to the door with his son.
“Have a good day, Billy.”
His son nodded, shifted his books and started to school without answering. Carrin wondered if something was bothering him, too. He hoped not. One worrier in the family was plenty.
“See you later, honey.” He kissed his wife as she left to go shopping.
At any rate, he thought, watching her go down the walk, at least she’s happy. He wondered how much she’d spend at the A. E. store.
Checking his watch, he found that he had half an hour before the A. E. finance man was due. The best way to get rid of a bad mood was to drown it, he told himself, and headed for the shower.
The shower room was a glittering plastic wonder, and the sheer luxury of it eased Carrin’s mind. He threw his clothes into the A. E. automatic Kleen-presser, and adjusted the shower spray to a notch above “brisk.” The five-degrees-above-skin-temperature water beat against his thin white body. Delightful! And then a relaxing rub-dry in the A. E. Auto-towel.
Wonderful, he thought, as the towel stretched and kneaded his stringy muscles. And it should be wonderful, he reminded himself. The A. E. Auto-towel with shaving attachments had cost three hundred and thirteen dollars, plus tax.
But worth every penny of it, he decided, as the A. E. shaver came out of a corner and whisked off his rudimentary stubble. After all, what good was life if you couldn’t enjoy the luxuries?
His skin tingled when he switched off the Auto-towel. He should have been feeling wonderful, but he wasn’t. Miller’s suicide kept nagging at his mind, destroying the peace of his day off.
Was there anything else bothering him? Certainly there was nothing wrong with the house. His papers were in order for the finance man.
“Have I forgotten something?” he asked out loud.
“The Avignon Electric finance man will be here in fifteen minutes,” his A. E. bathroom Wall-reminder whispered.
“I know that. Is there anything else?”
The Wall-reminder reeled off its memorized data—a vast amount of minutiae about watering the lawn, having the Jet-lash checked, buying lamb chops for Monday, and the like. Things he still hadn’t found time for.
“All right, that’s enough.” He allowed the A. E. Auto-dresser to dress him, skillfully draping a new selection of fabrics over his bony frame. A whiff of fashionable masculine perfume finished him and he went into the living room, threading his way between the appliances that lined the walls.
A quick inspection of the dials on the wall assured him that the house was in order. The breakfast dishes had been sanitized and stacked, the house had been cleaned, dusted, polished, his wife’s garments had been hung up, his son’s model rocket ships had been put back in the closet.
Stop worrying, you hypochondriac, he told himself angrily.
The door announced, “Mr. Pathis from Avignon Finance is here.”
Carrin started to tell the door to open, when he noticed the Automatic Bartender.
Good God, why hadn’t he thought of it!
The Automatic Bartender was manufactured by Castile Motors. He had bought it in a weak moment. A. E. wouldn’t think very highly of that, since they sold their own brand.
He wheeled the bartender into the kitchen, and told the door to open.
“A very good day to you, sir,” Mr. Pathis said.
Pathis was a tall, imposing man, dressed in a conservative tweed drape. His eyes had the crinkled corners of a man who laughs frequently. He beamed broadly and shook Carrin’s hand, looking around the crowded living room.
“A beautiful place you have here, sir. Beautiful! As a matter of fact, I don’t think I’ll be overstepping the company’s code to inform you that yours is the nicest interior in this section.”
Carrin felt a sudden glow of pride at that, thinking of the rows of identical houses, on this block and the next, and the one after that.
“Now, then, is everything functioning properly?” Mr. Pathis asked, setting his briefcase on a chair. “Everything in order?”
“Oh, yes,” Carrin said enthusiastically. “Avignon Electric never goes out of whack.”
“The phone all right? Changes records for the full seventeen hours?”
“It certainly does,” Carrin said. He hadn’t had a chance to try out the phone, but it was a beautiful piece of furniture.
“The Solido-projector all right? Enjoying the programs?”
“Absolutely perfect reception.” He had watched a program just last month, and it had been startlingly lifelike.
“How about the kitchen? Auto-cook in order? Recipe-master still knocking ‘em out?”
“Marvelous stuff. Simply marvelous.”
Mr. Pathis went on to inquire about his refrigerator, his vacuum cleaner, his car, his helicopter, his subterranean swimming pool, and the hundreds of other items Carrin had bought from Avignon Electric.
“Everything is swell,” Carrin said, a trifle untruthfully since he hadn’t unpacked every item yet. “Just wonderful.”
“I’m so glad,” Mr. Pathis said, leaning back with a sigh of relief. “You have no idea how hard we try to satisfy our customers. If a product isn’t right, back it comes, no questions asked. We believe in pleasing our customers.”
“I certainly appreciate it, Mr. Pathis.”
Carrin hoped the A. E. man wouldn’t ask to see the kitchen. He visualized the Castile Motors Bartender in there, like a porcupine in a dog show.
“I’m proud to say that most of the people in this neighborhood buy from us,” Mr. Pathis was saying. “We’re a solid firm.”
“Was Mr. Miller a customer of yours?” Carrin asked.
“That fellow who killed himself?” Pathis frowned briefly. “He was, as a matter of fact. That amazed me, sir, absolutely amazed me. Why, just last month the fellow bought a brand-new Jet-lash from me, capable of doing three hundred and fifty miles an hour on a straightaway. He was as happy as a kid over it, and then to go and do a thing like that! Of course, the Jet-lash brought up his debt a little.”
“Of course.”
“But what did that matter? He had every luxury in the world. And then he went and hung himself.”
“Hung himself?”
“Yes,” Pathis said, the frown coming back. “Every modern convenience in his house, and he hung himself with a piece of rope. Probably unbalanced for a long time.”
The frown slid off his face, and the customary smile replaced it. “But enough of that! Let’s talk about you.”
The smile widened as Pathis opened his briefcase. “Now, then, your account. You owe us two hundred and three thousand dollars and twenty-nine cents, Mr. Carrin, as of your last purchase. Right?”
“Right,” Carrin said, remembering the amount from his own papers. “Here’s my installment.”
He handed Pathis an envelope, which the man checked and put in his pocket.
“Fine. Now you know, Mr. Carrin, that you won’t live long enough to pay us the full two hundred thousand, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t suppose I will,” Carrin said soberly.
He was only thirty-nine, with a full hundred years of life before him, thanks to the marvels of medical science. But at a salary of three thousand a year, he still couldn’t pay it all off and have enough to support a family on at the same time.
“Of course, we would not want to deprive you of necessities, which in any case is fully protected by the laws we helped formulate and pass. To say nothing of the terrific items that are coming out next year. Things you wouldn’t want to miss, sir!”
Mr. Carrin nodded. Certainly he wanted new items.
“Well, suppose we make the customary arrangement. If you will just sign over your son’s earnings for the first thirty years of his adult life, we can easily arrange credit for you.”
Mr. Pathis whipped the papers out of his briefcase and spread them in front of Carrin.
“If you’ll just sign here, sir.”
“Well,” Carrin said, “I’m not sure. I’d like to give the boy a start in life, not saddle him with—”
“But my dear sir,” Pathis interposed, “this is for your son as well. He lives here, doesn’t he? He has a right to enjoy the luxuries, the marvels of science.”
“Sure,” Carrin said. “Only—”
“Why, sir, today the average man is living like a king. A hundred years ago the richest man in the world couldn’t buy what any ordinary citizen possesses at present. You mustn’t look upon it as a debt. It’s an investment.”
“That’s true,” Carrin said dubiously.
He thought about his son and his rocket ship models, his star charts, his maps. Would it be right? he asked himself.
“What’s wrong?” Pathis asked cheerfully.
“Well, I was just wondering,” Carrin said. “Signing over my son’s earnings—you don’t think I’m getting in a little too deep, do you?”
“Too deep? My dear sir!” Pathis exploded into laughter. “Do you know Mellon down the block? Well, don’t say I said it, but he’s already mortgaged his grandchildren’s salary for their full life-expectancy! And he doesn’t have half the goods he’s made up his mind to own! We’ll work out something for him. Service to the customer is our job and we know it well.”
Carrin wavered visibly.
“And after you’re gone, sir, they’ll all belong to your son.”
That was true, Carrin thought. His son would have all the marvelous things that filled the house. And after all, it was only thirty years out of a life expectancy of a hundred and fifty.
He signed with a flourish.
“Excellent!” Pathis said. “And by the way, has your home got an A. E. Master-operator?”
It hadn’t. Pathis explained that a Master-operator was new this year, a stupendous advance in scientific engineering. It was designed to take over all the functions of housecleaning and cooking, without its owner having to lift a finger.
“Instead of running around all day, pushing half a dozen different buttons, with the Master-operator all you have to do is push one! A remarkable achievement!”
Since it was only five hundred and thirty-five dollars, Carrin signed for one, having it added to his son’s debt.
Right’s right, he thought, walking Pathis to the door. This house will be Billy’s some day. His and his wife’s. They certainly will want everything up-to-date.
Just one button, he thought. That would be a time-saver!
After Pathis left, Carrin sat back in an adjustable chair and turned on the solido. After twisting the Ezi-dial, he discovered that there was nothing he wanted to see. He tilted back the chair and took a nap.
The something on his mind was still bothering him.
“Hello, darling!” He awoke to find his wife was home. She kissed him on the ear. “Look.”
She had bought an A. E. Sexitizer-negligee. He was pleasantly surprised that that was all she had bought. Usually, Leela returned from shopping laden down.
“It’s lovely,” he said.
She bent over for a kiss, then giggled—a habit he knew she had picked up from the latest popular solido star. He wished she hadn’t.
“Going to dial supper,” she said, and went to the kitchen. Carrin smiled, thinking that soon she would be able to dial the meals without moving out of the living room. He settled back in his chair, and his son walked in.
“How’s it going, Son?” he asked heartily.
“All right,” Billy answered listlessly.
“What’sa matter, Son?” The boy stared at his feet, not answering. “Come on, tell Dad what’s the trouble.”
Billy sat down on a packing case and put his chin in his hands. He looked thoughtfully at his father.
“Dad, could I be a Master Repairman if I wanted to be?”
Mr. Carrin smiled at the question. Billy alternated between wanting to be a Master Repairman and a rocket pilot. The repairmen were the elite. It was their job to fix the automatic repair machines. The repair machines could fix just about anything, but you couldn’t have a machine fix the machine that fixed the machine. That was where the Master Repairmen came in.
But it was a highly competitive field and only a very few of the best brains were able to get their degrees. And, although the boy was bright, he didn’t seem to have an engineering bent.
“It’s possible, Son. Anything is possible.”
“But is it possible for me?”
“I don’t know,” Carrin answered, as honestly as he could.
“Well, I don’t want to be a Master Repairman anyway,” the boy said, seeing that the answer was no. “I want to be a space pilot.”
“A space pilot, Billy?” Leela asked, coming in to the room. “But there aren’t any.”
“Yes, there are,” Billy argued. “We were told in school that the government is going to send some men to Mars.”
“They’ve been saying that for a hundred years,” Carrin said, “and they still haven’t gotten around to doing it.”
“They will this time.”
“Why would you want to go to Mars?” Leela asked, winking at Carrin. “There are no pretty girls on Mars.”
“I’m not interested in girls. I just want to go to Mars.”
“You wouldn’t like it, honey,” Leela said. “It’s a nasty old place with no air.”
“It’s got some air. I’d like to go there,” the boy insisted sullenly. “I don’t like it here.”
“What’s that?” Carrin asked, sitting up straight. “Is there anything you haven’t got? Anything you want?”
“No, sir. I’ve got everything I want.” Whenever his son called him ’sir,’ Carrin knew that something was wrong.
“Look, Son, when I was your age I wanted to go to Mars, too. I wanted to do romantic things. I even wanted to be a Master Repairman.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Well, I grew up. I realized that there were more important things. First I had to pay off the debt my father had left me, and then I met your mother—”
Leela giggled.
“—and I wanted a home of my own. It’ll be the same with you. You’ll pay off your debt and get married, the same as the rest of us.”
Billy was silent for a while, then he brushed his dark hair—straight, like his father’s—back from his forehead and wet his lips.
“How come I have debts, sir?”
Carrin explained carefully. About the things a family needed for civilized living, and the cost of those items. How they had to be paid. How it was customary for a son to take on a part of his parent’s debt, when he came of age.
Billy’s silence annoyed him. It was almost as if the boy were reproaching him. After he had slaved for years to give the ungrateful whelp every luxury!
“Son,” he said harshly, “have you studied history in school? Good. Then you know how it was in the past. Wars. How would you like to get blown up in a war?”
The boy didn’t answer.
“Or how would you like to break your back for eight hours a day, doing work a machine should handle? Or be hungry all the time? Or cold, with the rain beating down on you, and no place to sleep?”
He paused for a response, got none and went on. “You live in the most fortunate age mankind has ever known. You are surrounded by every wonder of art and science. The finest music, the greatest books and art, all at your fingertips. All you have to do is push a button.” He shifted to a kindlier tone. “Well, what are you thinking?”
“I was just wondering how I could go to Mars,” the boy said. “With the debt, I mean. I don’t suppose I could get away from that.”
“Of course not.”
“Unless I stowed away on a rocket.”
“But you wouldn’t do that.”
“No, of course not,” the boy said, but his tone lacked conviction.
“You’ll stay here and marry a very nice girl,” Leela told him.
“Sure I will,” Billy said. “Sure.” He grinned suddenly. “I didn’t mean any of that stuff about going to Mars. I really didn’t.”
“I’m glad of that,” Leela answered.
“Just forget I mentioned it,” Billy said, smiling stiffly. He stood up and raced upstairs.
“Probably gone to play with his rockets,” Leela said. “He’s such a little devil.”
The Carrins ate a quiet supper, and then it was time for Mr. Carrin to go to work. He was on night shift this month. He kissed his wife good-by, climbed into his Jet-lash and roared to the factory. The automatic gates recognized him and opened. He parked and walked in.
Automatic lathes, automatic presses—everything was automatic. The factory was huge and bright, and the machines hummed softly to themselves, doing their job and doing it well.
Carrin walked to the end of the automatic washing machine assembly line, to relieve the man there.
“Everything all right?” he asked.
“Sure,” the man said. “Haven’t had a bad one all year. These new models here have built-in voices. They don’t light up like the old ones.”
Carrin sat down where the man had sat and waited for the first washing machine to come through. His job was the soul of simplicity. He just sat there and the machines went by him. He pressed a button on them and found out if they were all right. They always were. After passing him, the washing machines went to the packaging section.
The first one slid by on the long slide of rollers. He pressed the starting button on the side.
“Ready for the wash,” the washing machine said.
Carrin pressed the release and let it go by.
That boy of his, Carrin thought. Would he grow up and face his responsibilities? Would he mature and take his place in society? Carrin doubted it. The boy was a born rebel. If anyone got to Mars, it would be his kid.
But the thought didn’t especially disturb him.
“Ready for the wash.” Another machine went by.
Carrin remembered something about Miller. The jovial man had always been talking about the planets, always kidding about going off somewhere and roughing it. He hadn’t, though. He’d committed suicide.
“Ready for the wash.”
Carrin had eight hours in front of him, and he loosened his belt to prepare for it. Eight hours of pushing buttons and listening to a machine announce its readiness.
“Ready for the wash.”
He pressed the release.
“Ready for the wash.”
Carrin’s mind strayed from the job, which didn’t need much attention in any case. He wished he had done what he had longed to do as a youngster.
It would have been great to be a rocket pilot, to push a button and go to Mars.
—ROBERT SHECKLEY
“Macx is a 21st century animal who eats information and excretes ideas. Ideas are nothing more than the connective spark between the charmed synchronicities of items of data. This is why restrictive societies like to control the flow of information: very few political soil pipes are built to take the pressure of millions of people squatting out ideas all over the place.” – Warren Ellis, from his review of Accelerando
“Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them – if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.”
***
“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.”
More poetry!
This from pioneering scientist, attorney general, philosopher, and poet Lord Francis Bacon.
When Bacon learned about the European discovery of the lands in the western hemisphere, he wrote The New Atlantis (1627) where he imagined a nation that gave greater rights to women, abolished slavery, eliminated debtors’ prisons, separated church and state, and provided freedom of religious and political expression.
Bacon also introduced a new way of thinking about the natural world. Instead of positing a theory and locating facts to support it, Bacon argued that one must start with facts, divide those facts into three categories (”instances of the presence of the characteristic under investigation, instances of its absence, or instances of its presence in varying degrees”), then reject the theories of the natural world that do not fit the facts. Bacon’s philosophy served as a cornerstone of the scientific method that developed in the decades after his death.
According to Bacon, there are four “idols” that obstruct clear, rational thinking. The idol of the tribe is the belief that preconceived notions of your place and time are correct and do not need analysis. The idol of the cave is allowing your personal likes and dislikes to interfere with your reasoning. The idol of the marketplace is confusing the meaning of words; presuming that the vernacular meaning and the technical meaning is precisely the same, for example. The idol of theater is relying on conclusions that were achieved using faulty methods or schools of analysis.
Life
The World’s a bubble, and the Life of Man
Less than a span:
In his conception wretched, from the womb
So to the tomb;
Curst from his cradle, and brought up to years
With cares and fears.
Who then to frail mortality shall trust,
But limns on water, or but writes in dust.
Yet whilst with sorrow here we live opprest,
What life is best?
Courts are but only superficial schools
To dandle fools:
The rural parts are turn’d into a den
Of savage men:
And where’s a city from foul vice so free,
But may be term’d the worst of all the three?
Domestic cares afflict the husband’s bed,
Or pains his head:
Those that live single, take it for a curse,
Or do things worse:
Some would have children: those that have them, moan
Or wish them gone:
What is it, then, to have, or have no wife,
But single thraldom, or a double strife?
Our own affections still at home to please
Is a disease:
To cross the seas to any foreign soil,
Peril and toil:
Wars with their noise affright us; when they cease,
We are worse in peace;—
What then remains, but that we still should cry
For being born, or, being born, to die
Frederik Pohl has been keeping a blog since the beginning of this year. Most recently he posted about his pacemaker implant, but over the last few months he’s also put up a series of posts about early fandom that are just terrific.
I’m a sucker for old SF pulps and stories about the penny-a-word writers that filled their pages. You’ll never convince me that John Updike, David Foster Wallace, or Joyce Carol Oates (or most of the literati of US literature) are half as good as Henry Kuttner, Cyril Kornbluth, Theodore Sturgeon, A. E. van Vogt, Damon Knight, or Stanley Weinbaum (or, from a bit later, Robert Sheckley or Barry Malzberg).
Pohl will celebrate his 90th birthday next Thanksgiving. He published his first story in 1939, and has won a whole raft of awards for his work since. As an editor he was responsible for publishing Samuel Delany’s Dahlgren, and Joanna Russ’s The Female Man.
One of his best known early works is The Space Merchants, co-written with Cyril Kornbluth. Space Merchants satirizes the people Mad Men romanticizes today. If we lived in a just and fair world Pohl would have the most prestigious accolades American literature has to offer raining down on him for his 70 years of creating and sustaining our cultural imagination.