Frederik Pohl's Blog, page 9

Starting early yesterday morning, my computer’s little warning bell has been ringing. Just one ring each time, because there is only one news item it wants me to know about: Jack Vance died yesterday. He was just three years older than I. People will be posting all kinds of things about Jack, and if any [...]

  “All in turn feel the lash of censure in a country where, as every baby is allowed to carry a whip, no person can escape.” —Hester Lynch Piozzi

(Snow, I mean.) When Dickens was writing his novels, the London winters were different. Then urchins threw snowballs to knock men’s top hats off their heads, and grown men slid their way across ice patches in the sidewalks for fun, and that’s what Dickens showed them doing in his books. They don’t do much of [...]

  My time with the 456th Bomb Group was cut short when somebody at Air Force headquarters in Caserta, Italy, noticed that as a civilian I had been a writer and magazine editor, and immediately jerked me back to headquarters to write publicity for the weather squadron. None of what I did in that capacity, [...]

  See, I wanted to get into the action This was World War II, and it was my personal war. I wanted to fight. When I was inducted, they put me, as they did everybody, through a battery of tests, and when they looked at all the results they said, “Boy, you qualified for everything. [...]

Remember that great old black-and-white movie, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington? That was the one where Jimmy Stewart, the Boy Scout leader who becomes a senator by accident, discovers what a gang of crooks many politicians are and filibusters until their misdeeds are exposed. It’s a great moment in the movie — unfortunately not quite [...]

  View Larger Map When I say I grew up in Brooklyn, those who are aware that Brooklyn is nothing grander than just one of the five boroughs of the megalopolis called New York are likely to have a mental picture of a six-year-old dodging trolleys for his life and never seeing a tree leaf [...]

  If you’re driving a People’s Gas truck and the fuel tank is running low, head for the North Side of Chicago. There the first of three filling stations has been operating for a year, turning waste cow dung into truck fuel with the help of an Obama Administration grant. An anerobic converter changes half [...]

I tried to figure out why I had been so open with Professor Betty and so closed-mouthed with most of the rest of the world. I finally figured it out. I hadn’t want to discuss it with anybody, I just wanted to spill it out and get rid of it, so it had to be [...]

When I realized how much I had told this Dr. Hull of the sort of things I had made a point of keeping quiet about, I couldn’t help wondering why she hadn’t at least smelled my breath before letting me talk about all the things I hadn’t been willing to tell anyone else about the [...]