Frederik Pohl (1919–2013) was an iconic and highly adaptive US science fiction writer whose career started in the Golden Age and spanned three-quarters of a century. That Pohl remained a relevant and vital part of the science fiction scene for so many decades is a testament to his talent, his multitude of interests, a general inquisitiveness, and the ways in which he mentored others.
Among the many honors Pohl received, he won the Hugo Award, the Locus Award, the Nebula Award, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for his most-famous novel, Gateway (1977). Pohl also won a US National Book Award for his novel Jem (1979) in the one-year-only science fiction category (enough was enough) and was a finalist for three other years’ best-novel awards. Pohl received the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award (1993) and entered the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1998.
In addition to his fiction, Pohl served as the editor of two magazines for almost a decade: Galaxy and its sister magazine IF (1959–69). Before that, he had edited Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories (just prior to World War II). He also edited several anthologies. As an early member of the Futurians—which included the similarly intellectually curious James Blish—Pohl believed in a cosmopolitan approach to science fiction and was a champion of international fiction in translation, especially from Japan. At various times he also wrote nonfiction prolifically and served as a literary agent. He collaborated in fiction with fellow writer C. M. Kornbluth and on anthology projects with his third wife, Carol Metcalf Ulf Stanton. He was also influenced by his second wife, the writer and editor Judith Merril. In all ways he was what was once called “a man of letters” and seemed unable to sit still and not busy himself with projects.
Pohl’s fiction began in the 1950s with slickly ironic satire with hints of absurdism and dark humor. During the 1950s he also cowrote, with Kornbluth, the satirical gem The Space Merchants; the novel featured a dystopian future dominated by overpopulation and ecological devastation. Throughout the 1960s, Pohl continued to explore and grow as a writer, culminating with his famous 1970s and 1980s Heechee series about encounters with the artifacts left behind by aliens who have gone into hiding. The first book, Gateway (1977), and its equally excellent sequel Beyond the Blue Event Horizon (1980) forever cemented Pohl’s already considerable reputation in the field.
Oddly, given his wide range of interests and devotion to high standards of quality, Pohl was a public critic of the New Wave. He found its excesses mystifying and self-indulgent, without, apparently, being able to identify its legitimate antecedents in mainstream literary fiction, surrealism, Decadent literature, and experimental writing that powered the movement. Regardless, “Day Million” (Rogue, 1966) fits comfortably within a proto–New Wave tradition by dint of its Borgesian compression of narrative and an unconventional approach to societal norms. However, the story is also included in David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer’s The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF (1994), for the exceedingly rigorous reason that “the attitude is right, giving it the texture and feel of hard sf. It is written for the reader who understands the hopelessness of a [far future] universe without physical constants.” So perhaps part of the enduring appeal of “Day Million” is that it straddles many different modes and approaches to science fiction.