The Way the Future Blogs

Frederik Pohl IV
 

I used the word “movie” in conjunction with the word “Gateway” the other day, and several quick-witted blog readers wrote in to ask what was going to happen with a film for my novel of that title. I shouldn’t have said anything, because it’s a long way from anything tangible, but I was kind of excited about it.

The small amount of news behind my remark is just that, after the previous producers spent somewhere around a million dollars on scripts without finding one they could film, I decided, in collaboration with my son Rick, aka Fred the 4th, to write our own. I do hope it works out well and maybe earns us at least an Emmy or something.

Rick already has three Emmys of his own, but his problem is his good wife is collecting them faster than he is, so what he would really like is an Oscar.

Of course, before we can start thinking about that we really should finish writing the script.

 
Related posts:

• Me and the Biz, Part 1, Part 2, Part 2 (continued)

 

How many of you have read that excellent novel, Gateway? And, pray tell, how many of you remember the novel’s most important character? No, I’m not talking about Robinette Broadhead, though it’s true that he gets more space then the other guy. I’m talking about the wise, kindly and super-smart computer who goes by the name of “Sigfrid von Shrink.”

Happens I know that there were groups of readers who paid special attention to Siggy because I know that a couple of them, one around MIT in Massachusetts and the other in England, tried to build working models of Sigfrid for themselves.

(Actually that’s not hard. I believe both groups were inspired by a math-teaching program that I had seen in operation in, if I remember correctly, North Carolina and written something about at the time. These pseudo-Sigfrids were not really at all intelligent, but they could carry on a conversation, and if you looked at a transcript of it it looked pretty much like a real psychologist and couch session.)

Anyway, for reasons connected with the movie business, I’d like to know if any old Sigfrid-builders are still around. If you are, or if you know of someone who is, please drop me a line c/o this blog.

Part 7 of “Alfred Bester and Frederik Pohl — The Conversation,” recorded 26 June 1978 at The Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
 

    Alfred Bester, ca. 1964.

Pohl: I want to tell you something about this arrogance that you were talking about. It is not just editors, although the best in science fiction have been pretty insufferable in one way or another. We’ve mentioned Horace Gold, who was also demented. John Campbell clearly had a very decisive personality and impressed it on everybody around him all the time.

Some years ago two psychologists decided they wanted to find out what science-fiction writers were like. They sent out a questionnaire to a bunch of science-fiction writers and asked them to answer the sort of questions you get on psychological-testing papers. How do you feel about your mother and this and that. And from these they prepared a group psychological profile of science fiction writers.

They compared it with a similar group profile for some other kind of writers and for a third group of people. They found out that the science fiction writers were in many ways similar to most human beings! There were a couple of differences, and one was in what is called “aggressive” versus “withdrawn” “cyclothymia.”

Bester: What is “cyclothymia”?

Pohl: It’s a kind of lunacy. [Editor's note: Cycling mood swings, but short of actual bipolar affective disorder.] But the question was not whether you had it, but if you had it which way you would go. Withdrawn cyclothymic people are more or less passive and tend to let things go; they overlook something that is wrong. The people who tend the other way are stubborn and won’t take nothing from nobody, and have their own opinions which you’re not going to change with an ax!

And science fiction writers were like that — the stubbornest, most difficult human beings alive!

Audience: How do writers get along with their readerships?

Bester: Fine, splendid. People ask me questions, and I answer them. People ask for autographs and I sign them. People want to talk to me. They’d like to be writers, so l try to help as hard as l can. I get along fine with readers.

Fred, have you ever been attacked by a reader?

Pohl: Not physically, no! But I went to a meeting in Boston some years ago; it was a Mensa meeting, and I was supposed to talk about science fiction and discuss it with somebody else, and this person came up to me and handed me a copy of one of my books.

I said, “Oh, you want my autograph.”

And he said, “No, I want to give it back to you. I hate it. I don’t want it in my possession.” And that’s the closest I ever came to being attacked. Of course, I started out as a fan.

Bester: So did I. I read what’s his name’s Amazing Stories when I was only that high. I couldn’t even afford to buy any. I used to read it on the newsstand. Until they chased me, and I’d come back five minutes later and I’d finish the story.

Pohl: Well, I didn’t do that. I bought them in secondhand stores and got them for a nickel. I identify more closely with readers than I do with most writers. I still read science fiction for pleasure. Not all of it, because who can? 1,200 books a year is more than I can handle. But when I have finished reading what I have to read professionally in science fiction, I read some just for fun.

Bester: Fortunately I don’t have to read it professionally. I read it just for fun, and I do read science fiction regularly.

Alas, there is not as much fun for me today because now that I’m a professional writer, always in the back of the mind is the critical writer, saying “Oh man, you loused that scene, you could have done it better.” That kind of thing kills a lot of stories for me. But occasionally a beaut comes along.

Continue reading ‘Me and Alfie, Part 7: Cyclothymia’ »

 
As I mentioned in the short piece I wrote about Alfie Bester, he and I had a joint talk for a bunch of English fans thirty-odd years or so ago. To my total amazement, some of them recently came up with a tape of that discussion. They transcribed it, and I thought some of you might like to read it here in the blog.

Here’s what Peter Roberts’ fanzine, Checkpoint, reported at the time:

TYNESIDE “FUTUREWORLDS”: (Ritchie Smith reports on the Newcastle sf film festival) “Alfred Bester and Frederik Pohl spoke at the Tyneside Cinema for some two hours on June 26th. Bester was smallish, plump, larger-than-life, and explosively friendly in a Hollywood sort of way, right down to calling some people ‘darling’. Pohl looked more literary: ectomorphic, tall, and restrained, full of good anecdotes, like Bester (sadly, too many of them were familiar from Pohl’s essay in Hell’s Cartographers). Afterwards they signed books — Bester’s dedications were especially witty — and the great men and a large minority of North-East fandom went off for a Chinese meal.”

   Frederik Pohl       Alfred Bester

Alfred Bester and Frederik Pohl — The Conversation

Recorded 26 June 1978 at The Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, by Kevin Williams. Transcript by Sue Williams, edited by Neil Jones and Kevin Williams. Originally published in Rob Jackson’s fanzine Inca 5, December 2009. Additional editing here by Leah A. Zeldes.
 

Pohl: Let me tell you about Alfie Bester. I’ve known him for a long time, and I first encountered him when I was 19 years old and editing a magazine called Astonishing Stories, and I bought a couple of stories of Alfie’s because I liked them. And then, some years later, Cyril Kornbluth and I had written a book called The Space Merchants, which I sort of hoped might win a prize, but it was beaten out by something called The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester.

A little while later, Cyril and I were working on another novel — I think it was Search the Sky. We’d written a couple of others by then, and I’d just begun to edit a thing called Star Science Fiction Stories — a series of anthologies of original science fiction stories. I brought home a story by Alfie Bester that I had just accepted for Star. It was called “Disappearing Act,” and I showed it to Cyril while we were working on our own book.

He gave me a resentful look and said, “You bring me this to read when we are writing that!”

[The novel we were writing was pretty much space opera, while Alfie's story was a literate gem. But I didn't explain this in the conversation, which led to a mixup. —FP]

Bester: Cyril didn’t like it?

Pohl: He loved it. He thought it was so much superior to what we were doing that it embarrassed him.

It’s been going on like that — our paths keep crossing, and he keeps doing this superlative work, and now I’ll let him speak for himself.

Bester: The one thing that you must understand is that we admire each other profoundly. I cannot tell you how many times I have read a story or novel of Fred’s and said, “Why in Christ’s name couldn’t I have written that?” — and then run into Fred and I tell him. The truth of the matter is that there is no rivalry between us at all, there is nothing but admiration.

We are rather like the high baroque musicians: We borrow from each other, we learn from each other, we admire each other, we do the same things, or different things, and have a hell of a ball.

Now Fred’s novel which he wrote with Cyril Kornbluth, The Space Merchants, is, I think, the finest novel ever written in the history of science fiction. It is a brilliant piece of work. Many brilliant things have followed it, but this came along when everybody was obsessed with Doc Smith space opera, which has its own charm — it’s great fun — and suddenly comes this realistic extrapolation of what American life, American advertising, American ecology and American psychosis will lead to eventually.

Horace Gold ran it as a three parter in Galaxy. Gravy Planet, he called it. A tremendous piece of work — exciting, ravishing. I will never forget the scene where that crazy broad with the needle is giving him the works. Fred, that was outrageously brilliant.

Pohl: That scene was all Cyril’s but I’ll accept the credit.

Alfie is one of the greatest writers science fiction has ever had and he is well aware of it — he just wants to be told! Everybody knows the novels, but there was a period in the early ’50s when in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction month after month there was a leading novelette by Alfred Bester.

Bester: Always with the wrong title!

Pohl: Always with the wrong title but always good! They were just brilliant, one after another.

Bester: I once sent two stories to Mick McComas and Tony Boucher (at F&SF) — they had asked for them, of course — and they switched the titles on the stories. I stink on titles, I really do, I’m terrible.

But the point I’m going to make very strongly is the greatness of science fiction. To my mind, it is the last, the last outpost of freedom of literature in the States — I can’t speak for England. In science fiction, we can do what no one else can do in any other medium.

I speak as a magazine writer, novelist and scriptwriter. The constraints of commercial fiction in the States in television, in films, in radio, you name it, are so severe that there is very little you can do. This is one of the reasons why I have written science fiction off and on all of my life. Quite simply because if I come up with an idea which rather enchants me, I would very much like to develop it and do it, so that people would see it and hear it.

If my producer, my director, the client says “No, no, it’s too expensive, no it’s too far out, people won’t understand it, ah forget it, give us something a little less,” then I have to turn to science fiction. In science fiction, you can do anything you please, and God knows the artist needs a free hand. The greatness of science fiction is not the science, not the prediction of the future, not anything you want to name — the greatness is that it is wide open, and we can do exactly as we damn please, and that story will run somewhere, somehow, and you will have your audience, and you will get feedback. And after all, a writer without an audience is no writer at all; you’ve got to have people that you are entertaining.

Continue reading ‘Me and Alfie’ »

Gustav Hasford

By the time Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren came along, I had pretty well accomplished my main purpose in going to work for Bantam — to get the taste of my brief but horrid experience at Ace Books out of my mouth — and was happily writing some quite good science fiction of my own. I really had done all I wanted to do at Bantam, but it took me a while to get myself out of there, partly because it didn’t seem sensible of me to leave the easiest job I had ever had, and partly for winding up some loose ends and partly just out of inertia.

And then, just when I was beginning to see daylight, the mail boy brought me a manuscript from somebody named Gustav Hasford, who said that we had spent some time together at a Milford Writers’ Conference, and so he was asking me to be absolutely candid about the novel ms. he was enclosing.

I’ve never believed in the doctrine of letting submissions sit for some weeks or months before getting around to reading them, so I began reading the story right away. I don’t know how far I got. I don’t know what the story was about anymore, either, but I remember what I wrote Hasford.

I said, “One of the things I don’t like about Milford is that you guys have to write stories on the spot, and so what you write is almost always lightweight fluff, playing games with words, without really having anything to say. This you do pretty well, but it isn’t worth doing. If you ever have a novel you really care about, I’d like to see it.”

(You may wonder why I said that when I was seriously considering getting out of the editing business quite soon. I don’t know the answer, but that’s what I said. I guess that was on one of the days that I was having second thoughts about leaving Bantam.)

And, anyway, within the week another novel ms. came from Hasford, along with a note that said, “Here it is. This one I care about.”

It was about the Vietnam War. It was called The Short-Timers. And it was good.

This gave me a tough decision. I wanted to see that this book got out to an audience — I mean, honest, that’s the only reason anybody should ever be an editor. But I didn’t want to stick around to do it.

What I did do was order a contract for Hasford. That way he would definitely get his excellent (oh, if still a little rough, but that’s the other thing that editors are for) book published. And then I began thinking about who, among the large Bantam team, would be the right one to take over from me.

And right about then Marc Jaffe, the man who had hired me in the first place, strolled into my office. “I just wanted to tell you, Fred,” he said, “that right now, with Dhalgren, your credibility is very high with us. Is there anything you need?”

That’s a sentence employees of any kind dream of hearing but seldom do, because it translates as “Can we give you more money? How much more? And maybe a full-time secretary of your own?” But then I told him that what I really wanted was to quit, and that was the end of it. He was regretful, and he hoped that if I ever wanted to come back I’d let him know, and he picked out another editor. Who took over, doubled the rather mingy advance I had put in the contract, made some useful editorial suggestions and got the book out in quick time.

Then Stanley Kubrick made it into a movie, called Full Metal Jacket, and the last of my Bantam editorial responsibilities was dealt with.

And that’s enough of editorial actions for one lifetime. I do have a good idea for a new magazine, but I’m not telling anyone what it is. They might persuade me to try actually bringing it out. And I really don’t want to get involved again.

 
I didn’t keep up with Hasford’s later publications, but a few years after the movie, I did hear something else about his interest in books, because everybody who read a newspaper did.

It seems he had some overdue library books.

Now, understand that here I’m not talking about maybe a couple of Isaac Asimov books, Asimov’s Guide to Everything and Asimov’s Guide to Everything Else and maybe one science-fiction anthology edited by my favorite anthologist (the one I’m married to, dope). No, this was an operation on a larger scale.

What seemed to have happened was that Hasford moved around a lot, and whenever he struck a new place, he’d take out a library card and pick up some reading material to take home. That, of course, was just about what the library people wanted him to do, except that he omitted an important final step. He checked the books out. He just didn’t bring them back. By the time the authorities visited his home, he had thousands of books from public libraries all over the United States and assorted other countries.

Surprised? Don’t be. It’s a matter of public record that a few science-fiction writers do have some small eccentricities. Most sf writers, though, have much huger ones.

That last summer we spent in the big old house over the Ashokan Reservoir was when Judy wrote most of her novel. She was there, with our daughters, all summer long. She had invited some of her old friends to spend much of the summer with her — I believe Katherine MacLean was one of them but don’t remember who else — and Judy had easily volunteered them to help her keep an eye on the kids so Judy herself could work on her book. Then, on weekends when I was there, I took over for a lot of the (actually pretty easy) childcare. That was the way it was in the first part of the summer.

Then, as Judy was having difficulties with the book, she began taking a room at the foot of the hill as soon as I got there on a weekend to take over prime charge of our daughters and writing away over the Friday night and the Saturday night, until relieving me on Sunday. I had no objection to any of that. As her agent, I had got Judy a pretty good contract with Doubleday, then still an all-purpose publisher with a decent record of best-sellers. Her editor was Walter Bradbury, the managing editor of the line, a business contact who had become a friend, and Brad was good with reassuring and encouraging Judy as she needed it. All was well.

Well, almost all was well, though with the occasional cloud no bigger than a man’s hand. When finally Judy gave me the completed manuscript, Brad did that careful line-by-line reading and then conference with the writer that I have described elsewhere. I think that must have been a tough meeting, because Judy tried her best to keep her style intact. But they got through it all right, or almost. There was a problem. Judy used one word in a scene that Brad really hated. I think the word may have been “burbled,” as in, “‘that’s great,’ he burbled.”

Brad was an almost-always reasonable man, but on this question, I don’t really know why, he was almost as intractable as Judy was. When he came to me with the problem, since I was Judy’s agent, I could not believe the two of them were locking heads over something that trivial. So I made a rather sneaky and very, very bad suggestion. I said, “If I were you, I would give up on the argument, but then I would just make sure the word wasn’t in the final setting proofs. Then when the actual printed book was in her hands and she noticed the change, I would abase myself in apologies.”

This Brad actually did. He was too upright a man to be really sneaky, though, so he let Judy know. It wasn’t the end of the world, though it did lead to a lot of yelling. But we got past it.

In fact, for several years there, we got past just about everything. I was losing big chunks of money every month on the literary agency, but it hadn’t yet reached the catastrophe point, and I was enjoying the work. And Judy had her novel.

The title on the book was Shadow on the Hearth. It wasn’t exactly the kind of book people thought of when they said “science fiction,” though it was set in the (near) future. In it, Judy’s postulate was that nuclear war actually happened. New York City was atom-bombed, and Judy’s story was that of a family trapped there.

She did a good job of it, too. The reviews were mostly friendly, and very soon there was even talk about a movie. Not Hollywood millions, that is. The kind of movie they were talking about would be a made-for-TV job, but what was wrong with that? There would be a useful chunk of money, no matter what, and then if it actually did get made her audience would simply explode, no more tens of thousands, to suddenly tens of millions.

It all happened, too. The movie did get made, quite well. It was a success. It didn’t happen rapidly, because such things don’t. But it was a great success for Judy, and she blossomed.

To be continued.

 
Related posts:
Judith Merril, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9