Tag Archives: Frederik Pohl

Fred Pohl Arrives in the Future

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The remarkable Fred Pohl is still looking for new challenges at age 89. His latest project is writing The Way the Future Blogs.

One of Pohl’s first posts explains how he started collaborating with Arthur C. Clarke on The Last Theorem:

Then, in one of his letters in the early part of 2006, Arthur rather off-handedly mentioned that, a couple of years earlier, in a fit of exuberance, he had signed publishing contracts for several books that, he was now convinced, he would never be able to write himself. Most of them he had arranged for some other writer to finish, but there was one, called The Last Theorem, for which he needed a collaborator.

That sounded like a hint, and I took it. I wrote back, “If you really need a collaborator for that unfinished novel, Barkis is probably willin’. I like collaborating and sadly seem to be running out of collaborators.”

[Via Andrew Porter and Steven Silver.]

Oh, You Have One of Those, Too

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I noticed Cheryl Morgan agreeing with Hugo-winner John Scalzi:

You were probably wise to ship it home, though we had all been looking forward to you trying to take it through security.

I packed mine in my suitcase, and TSA did indeed leave one of their calling cards letting me know they searched the bag before letting it on the plane. The contents seemed little disturbed, however, as if the search had only been done out of a sense of obligation, because you could never explain to a Congressional committee that there really was no need to check something that looked like a mortar round on the x-ray screen.

The Hugo I brought home from Australia in 1985 was packed in my carry-on and I lightheartedly wondered how much explaining I’d have to do when I walked through the metal detector. None, as it turned out. The security guard smiled and said, “Oh, you have one of those too.” I was deflated, and didn’t bother to answer Sure, fella, a tourist practically can’t get out of Australia without somebody forcing one of these on him. The real explanation proved to be that Fred Pohl and Charlie Brown had taken their Hugos through the same security checkpoint just before I arrived.