Frederik Pohl's Blog, page 23

My friend Sherry Gottlieb, who used to run the last surviving science-fiction bookstore in L.A. until she just couldn't keep up with the escalating rents, sent me the story behind this flyer. I love it. Makes me proud to be an American. I hope you are the same.

'He has a right [...]

This past summer three convicted killers of three young children went to a courtroom in Arkansas to confess under oath that they had committed the murders. (For all of the twenty or so years since their convictions they had all insisted they were innocent.) As soon as they lyingly confessed to being guilty [...]

A congratulations note from Mark Olson reminds me of what I didn't think of on my own, namely that we just passed the 75th anniversary of that earth-shaking event, the very first science-fiction convention ever, held when a handful of us New Yorkers dared the rail trip to Philadelphia to join with a handful of [...]

Publishing a fan mag in the 1930s was a low-skill, but not a no-skill job.
At the lowest level — that would be the carbon-copy magazine — it required no more competence than the ability to type a page of copy. The more sheets you could slip into your typewriter of copy paper, [...]

King of the Comics and Agent, Editor, Faaan
The thing about Julius Schwartz is that, while I myself did many things in that Early Paleozoic Era when there were no jet aircraft or nuclear submarines and people didn't even have TV sets yet, Julie Schwartz was doing the same things even earlier than I did.
For instance, [...]

One of my favorite Italian dishes was [...]

Part 2 of Review of the Campbell-Swisher Letters
Fantasy Commentator
Sam Moskowitz and A. Langley Searles Memorial Issue, Special Double Issue, Nos. 59 & 60.
 
On October 5, 1937, John W. Campbell's world changed. The powers at Street & Smith, on F. Orlin Tremaine's advice, appointed him to replace Tremaine as editor of Astounding Stories. That [...]

Fantasy Commentator
Sam Moskowitz and A. Langley Searles Memorial Issue, Special Double Issue, Nos. 59 & 60.
 
When John W. Campbell, Jr., washed out of MIT by failing to pass their German course, he didn't stay in Massachusetts. Instead, he returned to his mother's home in Orange, New Jersey. He had left some close friendships [...]

Remember the ozone hole? The hole in the atmospheric ozone layer over Antarctica that allowed dangerous solar radiation to come through to the surface of the Earth with potentially deadly effects on life there.
Starting in 1989, international agreements began to cap and then to reduce the percentage of ozone-destroying gases liberated through the use [...]

(This is a new feature I've been wanting to add to the blog, talking about some of the most memorable meetings I've attended — meetings about science, science fiction, world affairs, all kinds of things.. Some of them were one-off or by invitation only, so I can't urge you to try them for yourself. [...]