Frederik Pohl's Blog, page 19

    Guest Post By Jack Robins I recall many things about Robert W. Lowndes, how soft-spoken he was, how much he enjoyed studying old science fiction stories, and how warm and friendly he was. I remember one time, when John Michel, Don Wollheim, Lowndes and I were in a bar each drinking something. Lowndes [...]

  "The right to have access to every building in the city by private motorcar in an age when everyone possesses such a vehicle is the right to destroy the city." —Lewis Mumford

(By which, in this case, I mean Washington) When Obama failed to get enough Democratic Senators to support his 2009 bill to join our country to the rest of the civilized world in reducing greenhouse emissions, he lost his chance of success for at least that season, because then the Republicans took Congress in 2010 [...]

  If you've been ordering seeds for your garden lately you may have noticed a change in the packaging. Seed packets usually come with a map or printed instructions on the back of the packet telling you when to plant them, depending on where in America to live. This year the instructions have been changed [...]

I haven't been in the habit of putting my own stories in the blog, but there are one or two that I think belong here. "The Reunion at the Mile-High" was one. I wrote it as a "festschrift" story for Isaac Asimov and it, along with a dozen or so similarly born stories by other [...]

    Coming up soon, we'll post the science-fiction story I wrote as a gift for Isaac Asimov, and what he thought of it.

On Feb. 27, Dick Smith's father, Richard Hilbert Edwin Smith of West Bend, Wisconsin, took his dog out for a walk. He had been in apparent good health, but shortly later a passerby found him, unconscious and without a pulse, lying on the sidewalk. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital in the town of [...]

Jack Robins and Robert A.W. Lowndes were both founding-father Futurians, but in most other ways as little like each other as any two Futurians could be. Jack was with us from the start, and stayed with us partly because he was a fan, partly because he shared the dominant mode of leftish politics and partly [...]

Here's a question: What is the all-time dopiest and most objectionable decision that the Gang of Five in the wrong-headed Republican Supreme Court has forced on us? Answer: It has to be the so-called "Citizens United" decision. That's the one that made it an article of right-wing faith to believe that corporations are people. That's [...]

  "Any theory can be squared with the evidence, given sufficient ingenuity." —Stephen Law