Frederik Pohl's Blog, page 4

By Elizabeth Anne Hull An article I read some time ago in The Week (my favorite print replacement for the now online-only World Press Review) reassures me that “No, paper isn’t dead.” As I’m buried in paper in various forms — greeting cards (ones received as well as those not yet sent), photographs, wills, old […]

Apparently largely because farmers feed regular doses of antibiotic to pigs to make them grow to salable weights faster, many pigs harbor the food-poisoning bacterium Yersinia enterocolitica. One study found that some some 69 percent of supermarket pork was tainted with Yersinia. How to protect against infection? Always cook pork to at least 145 degrees […]

By Elizabeth Anne Hull Billionaire Bill Gates‘ recent prediction that by 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world caught my eye. I can’t help wondering how much attention Mr. Gates has paid to theshrinking middle class in the United States, let alone how much understanding he has about what it’s […]

Q: “In your novel Gateway how much of the character Robinette Broadhead is autobiographical and how much is therapeutic?” A: Well, in a sense every character in every story I ever wrote is autobiographical. That is, every character is basically what I think I would care about, do, and wish for if I were that […]

Most of the blog team will be at Capricon 34, in Wheeling, Ill., February 6–9. Come and see us! Betty: “Is Canon a Fading Concept?” 7 p.m. Friday, Birch B With re-makes and re-boots everywhere, canon may be a fading luxury concept. Replaced by $$$. Will purists who hold canon important die out and be […]

By Elizabeth Anne Hull Exciting news from Fred’s granddaughter Emily Pohl-Weary: She’s been nominated for another award, the 2014 CBC Bookie, for her young-adult novel Not Your Ordinary Wolf Girl. You can cast a vote for Emily’s book and (and other amazing Canadian books). You don’t have to be Canadian. You don’t have to register […]

By Elizabeth Anne Hull Remember the recent outbreak of measles? It brought a rush response from the CDC to immunize recent immigrants and visitors with long-term visas, who sometimes come from areas of the world where measles hasn’t been vanquished to the extent it has been in the West. But it wasn’t just noncitizens who […]

When 840,000 gallons of unclearable, ultrasticky Canadian crude comes to take up residence in your little town — while you yourself can’t live there anymore — is that what you want? Three years ago, the Enbridge Energy pipeline carrying heavy Canadian crude ruptured and spilled almost a million gallons of ultra-polluting tar-sands crude into the […]

  By Elizabeth Anne Hull An important shibboleth of literacy when I was much younger was whether people could properly use, spell, and punctuate the common words to, two, and too. Likewise there, their and they’re, and it’s and its, and dozens of other often confused sets of words. While a colleague and I were […]

  By Elizabeth Anne Hull An important shibboleth of literacy when I was much younger was whether people could properly use, spell, and punctuate the common words to, two, and too. Likewise there, their and they’re, and it’s and its, and dozens of other often confused sets of words. While a colleague and I were […]