his volume pulls together 30 stories from the core of Pohl's still-ongoing career (copyrights run from 1949 to 1996) in a tribute to his more than 50 years of writing polished, intellectually exciting, satirical, adventure-packed science fiction. Here are descriptions of a few of the highlights.
"The Merchants of Venus" fits into Pohl's vast Heechee saga and concerns the efforts of tour guide Audee Walthers to strike it rich on the hellhole planet of the title. In "The Kindly Isle," a contemporary Caribbean setting hosts a mystery: What strange phenomenon is turning all the inhabitants of the island into happy campers? Growing up in a down-and-out portion of New York City is never easy. But if the future inhabitants of one district can just survive their current troubles, paradise is around the corner in "The Greening of Bed-Stuy."
"Spending a Day at the Lottery Fair" offers that patented American mixture of mindless entertainment and deadly mortality, as a family attends a carnival whose sole purpose is thinning the herd. An alien invasion goes wrong in all the right ways for humanity in "Some Joys Under the Star." One of Pohl's best and best-known stories, "The Gold at the Starbow's End," recounts the birth of transhumanity among a group of astronauts sent on a fake one-way mission to the stars.
Pohl's most famous collaborator, C.M. Kornbluth, carries half the weight of "The Meeting," where the grieving parents of an autistic child must make a life-or-death choice enabled by a new technology. "Let the Ants Try" is a time-travel tale that illustrates the butterfly effect quite succinctly—but with ants! The present-day setting of "Speed Trap" only serves to increase its scary relevance, as Pohl ponders in dramatic fashion just why everything takes longer than it should and sometimes doesn't get done at all. "Day Million" examines an almost-unknowable milieu: the future of a thousand years hence. And closing out the book is "Fermi and Frost," a nuclear winter's tale.
The man who did everything
Recently we've enjoyed chunky career-capping short-story collections from several veteran SF writers: Arthur Clarke, Robert Silverberg, Ray Bradbury, J.G. Ballard, Harry Harrison and Robert Sheckley. These volumes could—and should—form the formidable nucleus of any SF collection. And this six-foot shelf of wonders is now enhanced by the Pohl volume under discussion today.
Even more so perhaps than the writers listed above, Pohl and his career lie at the heart of 20th-century SF. The man has done simply everything, from agenting and editing to writing solo and with numerous collaborators. His work spans nonfiction, mainstream, mystery, fantasy and, of course, SF. Born in 1919, he's been present through several generations of the field, helping it mature and expand.
But out of all his contributions, we're concerned now solely with his fiction writing, with the additional focus on SF. And here there's much to praise. Pohl is perhaps best known as a dark humorist for such landmark works as The Space Merchants (1953) and that strain of his character is surely on vivid display here. In tales like "Lottery Fair" and "Saucery" (where real live dull Martians must undergo a PR makeover), Pohl shows that he is an expert at dissecting the foibles of mankind in an instructional and entertaining manner. But this one-note categorization of Pohl overlooks so much else.
For one thing, Pohl has always striven to be cutting-edge in his speculations and extrapolations. Stories like "Starbow's End" and "Day Million" are still unsurpassed for their depiction of something close to the Singularity, that current hot-button topic. "The Knights of Arthur," from 1957, uses cyberpunk tropes expertly. And in this age of face transplants, "The Meeting" remains eerily relevant. Besides this scientific acumen, Pohl's stories exhibit a real attempt to upgrade the characterizations in SF. His protagonists are deeply felt and believable (his frequent usages of psychotheraphy as a literary touchstone show his desire to plumb interior depths), and he manages to make the reader empathize with flawed hero and redeemable villain alike.
Finally, Pohl is a master plotter and craftsman. His stories are intricately assembled into efficient, attention-grabbing thrill rides that don't let go from page one. That is, when they're not quiet and meditative like "I Remember a Winter," the musings of a man on the twists of fate. Pohl can do both wide-screen and intimate.
This fine collection is both a capsule history of the field and the record of one man's outstanding creative life. Who could ask for more?
