I was just sitting in the bar of one of this year’s Worldcon hotels, enjoying the end of LoneStarCon 3, the 73rd Worldcon, when bad news came through on Twitter. Frederik Pohl’s granddaughter announced that he had died. As soon as this was read aloud the whole group fell silent. This was a group of writers, editors and fans, and all of us were immediately struck with a sense of shock and a sense of loss. We didn’t want it to be true, and as it became clear that it was true we didn’t want to come to terms with it. Frederik Pohl was almost the last of his generation, one of the last people to remember the birth of science fiction as a genre with an identity and a community. We felt colder and closer to the grave, the way you do when you lose a grandparent or a parent.
It’s impossible to over-estimate the importance of Frederik Pohl to the science fiction genre.
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