A Brooklyn Story

It turns out I'm in good company as a science fiction writer living in Brooklyn.

Frederik Pohl is one of those huge names in science fiction I've always known, but somehow I had categorized this sf great as an editor, not a writer. We'll call it the sort of mistake you can expect from my creative genius mind.

Pohl was indeed the editor of Galaxy and If magazines, and, according to Wikipedia, he "acquired and edited" books for Bantam in the 1970's. Wikipedia also has a great picture of an old issue of Galaxy . My favorite sf author, Robert Heinlein, is featured on the cover. This was the issue in which "The Puppet Masters" appeared. Too cool!

Pohl was also an active member of the Futurians, an influential, New York-based group of sf writers and editors (the most famous of whom was Issac Asimov) who defined themselves quite literally as forward-thinking.

Now for the part that my brain had amazingly not absorbed: Pohl was also a prolific writer. I'm sure this is no news to you, but I looked through his bibliography to see the extent of what I'd missed.

His most award-winning series was the Gateway series, which apparently relates the story of an alien space base, filled with space ships that human explorers find, but have no idea how to use. People get into these ships and are whisked away to destinations unknown. Wikipedia summarizes, "Some lead to fortune, but others lead to death."

This is enough of a description to make me want to read.

In November 2005, Tor came out with Platinum Pohl : The Collected Best Stories . The stories span his career, from a struggling young writer living in Brooklyn, up to more recent times, when he was already a Hugo and Nebula award winner.

One of the stories in Platinum Pohl is called "The Greening of Bed-Stuy," in which, according to Marc Schogol writing for The Pueblo Chieftan,

"Pohl writes about a slum in his native Brooklyn where attempts to create heaven on earth for the ghetto residents are frustrated by those who, in every sense, make a killing off the existing poverty and suffering."

Platinum Pohl looks like an excellent place for a Pohl newbie to start reading. This morning I reserved the book from the Brooklyn Public Library. A Brooklyn author writing a Brooklyn science fiction story- I wouldn't have wanted to get my hands on the book any other way.