Frederik Pohl
Frederik Pohl
Frederik George Pohl, Jr.was an American science fiction writer, editor and fan, with a career spanning more than seventy-five years—from his first published work, the 1937 poem "Elegy to a Dead Satellite: Luna", to the 2011 novel All the Lives He Led and articles and essays published in 2012...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth26 November 1919
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
cheating firsts cigarette
My first thought was always a cigarette. It still is, but I haven't cheated.
science thinking curves
You don't think progress goes in a straight line, do you? Do you recognize that it is an ascending, accelerating, maybe even exponential curve? It takes hell's own time to get started, but when it goes it goes like a bomb.
catholic fiction science-fiction
I'm pretty catholic about what constitutes science fiction.
writing thinking people
I was thinking of writing a little foreword saying that history is, after all, based on people's recollections, which change with time.
heart light-years break
What were we doing here? Traveling hundreds or thousands of light-years, to break our hearts?
writing people fiction
People as me how I do research for my science fiction. The answer is, I never do any research.
fiction literature different
My old English buddy, John Rackham, wrote and told me what made science fiction different from all other kinds of literature - science fiction is written according to the science fiction method.
stories magazines might
In terms of stories I would buy for a science fiction magazine, if they take place in the future, that might do it.
fantasy fiction method science sf though written
There is a method which distinguishes SF from fantasy, though a lot of the science fiction written does not go by that method, and some fantasy does.
answer ask people science
People ask me how I do research for my science fiction. The answer is, I never do any research.
american-writer believe cambridge couple fiction grades hawking science spent
Stephen Hawking said he spent most of his first couple of years at Cambridge reading science fiction (and I believe that, because his grades weren't all that great).
apart plug
You look at the world around you, and you take it apart into all its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens.
becoming date either fraction large later liked played scientists sf time
A large fraction of the most interesting scientists have read a lot of SF at one time or another, either early enough that it may have played a part in their becoming scientists or at some later date just because they liked the ideas.
author computer construct known looked program specific stories tells
Stories where the author has known very little, but run a computer program that tells him how to construct a planet, and looked up specific things about rocketry and so on, really suck.