The Best of Frederik Pohl

What the author has to say about all this Afterword to THE BEST OF FREDERIK POHL

WHEN we first talked about a collection of the "best" of my stories I dove right into something close to catatonia. It isn't easy to pick out the best of your life's work. That is almost like asking me to pick which two of my four children were to appear in a "best of the family" household anthology. In fact, it is exactly like that because, although like most writers I try to maintain a pose of public professionalism, also like most writers I bleed and die with every story I write. The stories don't always turn out to be masterpieces. In fact, I have written stories that were awful. But in no case is that the story's fault. The fault is only mine; and I must admit that it gives me great pain to admit to anyone that a story-child of mine is in any way handicapped, however clearly I know it in my private mind. But, of course, saying which is "best" is only the other side of saying which is "worst."

So when Ballantine Books suggested that someone else make the selections for me, I was ecstatic with relief. And I could not have picked a better man than Lester del Rey, best of friends, most mortal of combatants, most trustworthy person I have ever known.

At my request, Lester limited his selection to stories published in the first half-century of my life. That's just smarts on my part. I am saving up for a second volume when I reach 100. (At the moment I have almost 46 years to go, and who knows what I'm going to write yet?) And at his request I am appending a few notes about some of the stories.

This is one of the few writers' vices I don't usually have. It seems to me that a story should say what it has to say internally. If something should be said about it that will affect its impact on a reader, then the only fair way for the author to behave would be to go around to every reader and tell him about it. As that isn't practical, or even desirable-how terrible it would be to listen to all those excuses and cries of pain!-I try as much as I can to make the stories speak for themselves.

But for some of these stories there are thanks I should give, or circumstances that I think are interesting enough to warrant departing from my rule. . . and so below are notes on some of the stories in this volume.

In 1954 Lester del Rey and I were writing a novel in collaboration, and it was taking forever. Lester is a fine writer as well as an old and close friend, but we should never collaborate. He has his way of writing, and I have my own, wholly incompatible, way of writing, and neither of us is about to change one whim to accommodate the other.

So one day, when we were on the third draft of chapter six, or possibly the sixth draft of chapter three, I announced I needed a vacation, and I took a week off and wrote "The Tunnel Under the World." (I didn't call it that. I called it "The Ides of June," and I still like that title better, but it seems a little late, now, to change it back.)

Scientific American said of "The Tunnel Under the World" that it was a cautionary tale, representing what the advertising people would do to us if they had the power. One of the best things about writing is finding out, from time to time, that you are understood exactly. That's the statement I meant to make, and I believe that statement to be true.

The idea for "The Midas Plague" originally came from Horace Gold, editor of Galaxy Magazine. He said, "Fred, why don't you write a story about a world in which the problem is over-, rather than under-, production?" I said, "Because I don't for one second believe any such world could exist." So I turned him down; and I was not the only writer to do so by a long shot-I think he must have asked every regular in Galaxy's pages to write that story. All of them turned him down, too. But he kept insisting for a year or so, until finally I noticed that my subconscious had been tinkering with the idea, trying permutations and complications on for size. Suddenly I realized I could, in fact, write the story after all.

So I did, and Horace published it, and it has been just about the most widely republished shorter-than-novel story I ever wrote; it turns up in economics texts and sociology courses, and I once listened to Robert Theobald lecturing on a possible alternative economic future for twenty minutes before it gradually dawned on me that he was telling the story of "The Midas Plague."

When I lecture at colleges, during the question period somebody usually asks how I know when a story is ready to be written, and how long it takes to write one. Those are harder questions than they seem. Let me answer them for "Day Million" to show why.

The parts of "Day Million" had been rattling around my head for a long time-the notion of gender being a matter of choice, the use of taped reproductions of people to replace the people (I first began to think of that as a story possibility when I first heard of Turing's Paradox), and so on. So in a sense I had been working on the story for about ten years. However, in terms of actual chained-to-the-typewriter time, I began to write the story at about four o'clock one morning (I work at night when I can, because there are fewer interruptions), finished the first draft at six, stopped for breakfast, put clean paper in the typewriter and had the story in the mail by nine. So the length of time it took me was five hours or ten years.

How did I know it was ready to write? I didn't. I simply wanted to write a story about the millionth day of the Christian era, and when I started to consider what that millionth day might be like, all the bits and pieces of "Day Million" began to fall into place.

Why did I want to write a story about the millionth day of the Christian era? I am a little embarrassed to say. The fact is I had had a notion for a tv series which I wanted to call Day Million-and the principal reason for writing the story, which had nothing at all to do with the series I had in mind, was to protect the title until I could get the series produced.

I never did get the series produced, and I see no reason to think I ever will-but I did write the story!

The first book I ever had published was a novel written in collaboration with C. M. Kornbluth, The Space Merchants. It represents the major part of my perceptions about the advertising industry, but there were a few left over that I discovered long after The Space Merchants was in print. This is one.

How could I have left Christmas out of the saga of forcing things people don't need down their regurgitating throats? I don't know. Clearly here was an oversight of enormous proportions. It was too late for me to do anything about The Space Merchants, but when my first short-story collection came to be published, and the editor suggested I write one original for it, I leaped at the chance to write and include "Happy Birthday, Dear Jesus."

In the mid-1960s, I received my first invitation to participate in an actual swear-to-God scientific meeting, on Planetology and Space Mission Planning, sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences. I loved it. Later that year I wrote this story, using some of the color and background I had picked up-of course changing it around considerably. I invented a cast of characters named with names like Resnik, Grew and MacKenzie, and an unnamed Egyptian astronomer who had not gotten over the Suez war (the Six-Day War had not yet happened). While the story was going through the hatching process at Playboy, being illustrated and set and proofread and printed, I went to another such meeting, this one in Boston, and you'll never guess who sat down beside me at lunch? A man named McKenzie. And there was a man named Resnick on the roster, and also, I was told, there was quite an unpleasant scene in the bar one night with a Lebanese (not Egyptian) astronomer who was still thoroughly unreconciled to the Suez War.

That is enough to make a person wonder.

From time to time I get into discussions with people on what good science fiction should be. One of the strictures often proposed is that sf should be relevant to contemporary problems. I don't believe this for one second. I think sf should not discuss what everyone else discusses. I think it should discuss what everyone should be discussing, but hasn't yet come to understand. When Carol Burnett signs off her TV program with "Don't pollute, folks!", ecology is no longer a fit subject for sf.

The point is that this twenty-year-old story is about overpopulation. I wouldn't write it now. But I'm glad I wrote it then.

I originally called this story "A Cure for Warts and Killing," but the editors of Playboy decided against that title when they printed it. They may have been right.

One thing I've noticed about science-fiction writers is that those who know a great deal about a particular subject seldom discuss that subject in their science-fiction stories. For example, Eric Temple Bell was both a first-rate mathematician and, undet the name of John Tame, a first-rate sf writer some years ago. He never wrote about mathematics. Isaac Asimov, whose Ph.D. is in biochemistry, writes about all the sciences except biochemistry.

If there is an area of human endeavor in which I know a specialist's kind of knowledge, it is politics. I spent 20 years in political work, have written one book (Practical Politics) on the subject and a lot of shorter pieces, have ghost-written speeches, run campaigns-the lot.

At least a dozen times I've tried to write a science-fiction story about politics, and every time I've abandoned the effort-every time but one. "The Children of Night" is the one.

One of my interests is war. My library of war books is as big as my library of scientific books, and I feel I know quite a lot about what war does to people. One of the things I have observed is that the reaction of people to war is never simple or holistic. If you have stock in an aircraft company, your reaction is quite unlike that of your neighbor, who is of draft age and deeply involved in his career. If your personal life is unrewarding, you are a lot more likely to be a damn-the-torpedoes hero than if you really like your job, wife and home. Etc.

It seemed to me at one time that it would be an interesting project to write a series of stories about what the discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe would mean to a selected cast of lead characters-a fashion designer (Martian prints the rage!), a philologist, a diplomat, etc. I managed to get two of the stories written-"Sad Solarian Screenwriter Sam," about a screenwriter in this situation, was one; this is the other. I doubt I will ever write more-but someone still should!

It is not easy to stop there, when there are other stories in the volume to talk about, and I remember so well every birth pang, every cranky teething through the typewriter. But I have something else I want to say, and that is to acknowledge a very large debt that accumulated over nearly a quarter of a century to two people. I am not the only one who owes much to them. Every science-fiction writer and every reader is in their debt, for being the first with the courage and the sagacity to make sf a staple in the mass-market paperback field.

I personally owe them something more than that. I owe them friendship, courtesy, help beyond the call of duty. . and love.

Their names are Betty and Ian Ballantine, and until the day I die they will both have a very special place in my heart.

-Frederik Pohi

1974