Considered A Pioneer Of The Genre, He Wrote For Over 75 Years

While space flight is currently reserved for the very few, science fiction authors ... at least the good ones ... give the rest of us an opportunity to imagine what it might be like to ply the stars. Such an author, by almost anyone's estimation, was Frederik Pohl, who was considered by many to be one of the pioneers of the genre with a career spanning 75 years.

Pohl passed away September 2 after being admitted to a hospital suffering from respiratory distress, according to a notice posted on his official blog.

His granddaughter, Emily Pohl-Weary, broke the news on Twitter. "Rest in peace to my beloved grandfather Frederik Pohl who showed me by example how to be an author. 1919-2013," she posted to the social media site.

A biography posted on www.frederikpohl.com cites author Kingsley Amis, who calls Pohl  "the most consistently able writer science fiction, in its modern form, has yet produced," Many of his works were adapted for radio, television and film, including The Space Merchants in 1953. He also wrote non-fiction, such as Practical Politics, described as a "how-to" manual for the American political process.

On Pohl's blog "The Way the Future Blogs" ... a riff on the title of his memoir "The Way the Future Was" ... it is noted that "Fred left a thick file of things he wanted to tell you, so we'll likely keep posting for a while." No funeral arrangements have been finalized.

FMI: http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/2013/09/farewell/