Episode description

Frederik Pohl (author of Gateway--the classic science fiction novel which won the Nebula, Hugo, Campbell and Locus awards) is today's featured guest.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the February 10, 2010 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 34 minutes] This is the first half of this interview, which was recorded on January 30, 2010.

Topics: predicting the future using the Delphi Method; his co-founding of The Futurians; his nonfiction books: The Way the Future Was, Our Angry Earth, and Science as a Spectator Sport; the Americanization of the world (which he has witnessed by traveling to more than 50 different nations); his modest contribution to democracy in Moscow; how he was excluded from attending the very first WorldCon; and a few insights about his long-term friends: Donald A. Wollheim (the creator of DAW Books), and Isaac Asimov.

Frederik Pohl is a science fiction writer, and has been a book and magazine editor, as well as a poet, critic, literary agent and teacher. He edited Galaxy magazine and its sister magazine If, winning the Hugo for If three years in a row. His writing also won him three Hugos and multiple Nebula Awards. He became a Nebula Grand Master in 1993.

I asked Fred for this interview for several reasons: I'd read Gateway in 1977 when it first came out  (I was 22 and still impressionable); a few weeks ago, his buddy Gregory Benford suggested that I interview him; and because, just a few months ago, Frederik Pohl celebrated his 90th birthday.