<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

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US writer Frederik Pohl (b. November 26, 1919 as Frederik George Pohl, Jr) has had a long and varied career in SF. He was an editor and agent as well as a writer during the 1940s, although little of his short fiction from this period is particularly memorable. "Let the Ants Try" (1949) is his first notable story. He became editor of Galaxy magazine and other titles during the 1960s, including putting together several anthologies, but turned to full-time writing during the 1970s. Prior to that, he had concentrated on short stories and most of his novels had been collaborations with either Jack Williamson or Cyril M. Kornbluth.

Pohl's partnership with Kornbluth, which resulted in six novels, two of which were not SF, and several short stories, produced some of the most significant SF of the early 1950s. The most famous of these was The Space Merchants (1952), a satirical novel in which an advertising agency is hired to entice settlers to relocate to Venus despite the harsh conditions there. Pohl later added a sequel, The Merchants' War (1984). Gladiator-at-Law (1955) examined a dystopian future in which corporations effectively run the government. Some of Pohl's best solo short work includes "The Midas Plague" (1954), "The Tunnel Under the World" (1955), and "The Man Who Ate the World" (1956).

Pohl's novels during the 1960s were competent but undistinguished. He collaborated with Williamson for a short series of young adult novels and an adult series that started with The Reefs of Space (1963). His short fiction continued to maintain a very high standard, and several collections appeared, bringing together the best of his work at that length.

During the 1970s, Pohl's novels began to improve dramatically. Man Plus (1976), the story of efforts to alter humans to live on Mars, won the Nebula and Gateway (1977) won another, plus a Hugo. Pohl wrote several sequels to Gateway, the premise of which is that humans reach the stars by making use of an abandoned faster-than-light transportation system that they don't fully understand, eventually uncovering the secrets of the alien Heechee. Other novels of particular merit include Black Star Rising (1985), Outnumbering the Dead (1990), and Mining the Oort (1992).

Pohl has also won the Hugo Award for "The Meeting" (1973) and "Fermi and Frost" (1986). The appeal of his work has remained strong even though SF readers are not as tolerant of satire as they once were. He also edited the first series of original anthologies, the Star Science Fiction collections from Ballantine published during the 1960s.

Platinum Pohl (2006) contains a good retrospective selection of his work.