FREDERIK POHL—science fiction author, for which he won a Hugo and a Nebula (Gateway, 1977) and the only National Book Award given in a one-year category for that genre (Gem, 1980); editor (for which he won seven Hugos (Galaxy and If magazines, 1962-1969); literary agent (who helped get Isaac Asimov’s first novel published); critic and historian—died on September 2, 2013, at the age of 93.
Pohl’s memoirs, The Way The Future Was, is one of few such books in the genre. It is both educational and entertaining.
A few awards
From 1959 until 1969, Pohl edited Galaxy magazine and its sister magazine If. The latter won three successive annual Hugo Awards as the year’s best professional magazine.
In 1977, his novel Gateway won four Best Novel awards: the Hugo, the Locus, the Nebula, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.
In 1979, his novel Jem won a National Book Award.
In 1984, his collection of novellas Years of the City won the Campbell Memorial Award.
In 1993, the Science Fiction Writers of America named Pohl its 12th recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award.
In 1998, he was inducted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, its third class of two dead and two living writers.
In 2010, Pohl won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer for his blog The Way the Future Blogs.
New maps of hell
In his book on science fiction, New Maps Of Hell (1960), British author and historian Kingsley Amis called Pohl the “most consistently able writer [that] science fiction, in its modern form, has yet produced.”
Rest in peace, Mr. Pohl.
