Apart from the sites of their generation many of these stories have special personal associations for me. “The Celebrated No-Hit Inning” came about when Horace Gold told me I couldn’t write a science fiction story about baseball. If you’ve ever heard the 1970s British rock group that called themselves The Icicle Works, my story “The Day the Icicle Works Closed” will tell you where they got their name. “Day Million” is special to me because it wrote itself so quickly and easily, one night between midnight and dawn—and (I should admit) because the piece works so well when I do a reading. “The Gold at the Starbow’s End” was in two ways a first: the first story all my own that appeared in Analog (although John Campbell had published a number of my collaborations he never took a solo job), as well as being the very first story Ben Bova bought when he took over after John’s death. (The readers, used to thirty-seven years of John Campbell’s G-rated editing, didn’t quite know what to make of my story’s somewhat sexual content. In that month’s poll 50 percent of the readers voted it in first place, the other 50 percent in last.) “The Meeting” gave me the first Hugo I had ever won as a writer (I’d picked up a couple as editor of the magazine If)—and the only one ever given to my vastly underappreciated collaborator, Cyril Kornbluth. “Shaffery Among the Immortals” sticks out in my memory because of two things Isaac Asimov said to me about it—first, that he hadn’t known I was capable of writing that sort of story; second, that he wished he had done it himself. “Let the Ants Try” was the first short story of mine that I remained pleased with after I saw it in print (which makes all the more humbling the fact that the idea was given to me by my friend and boss at Popular Science, George Spoerer, who would not accept a share in either the payment or the byline.) “Growing Up in Edge City” stays with me because I didn’t know I was going to write it until it happened; I was visiting friends in Cape May, New Jersey; they had to go out on family business, leaving me alone in an otherwise empty house with a coffee pot and a typewriter, and the story came out. “To See Another Mountain” is in my mind inextricably linked to my favorite of all violin concerti, Mendelssohn’s E-minor, because I played the record of it over and over while I was writing the story…
Well, enough of that; the stories really must speak for themselves. I should only add that, as every writer knows, writing is hard and sometimes painful work, while having written, on the other hand, is pure joy. So producing these stories has, on balance, been fun for me…and I hope reading them has been pleasurable for you as well.
—Frederik Pohl
Palatine, Illinois
March 2005
COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful acknowledgments are made for:
“The Merchants of Venus.” Copyright © 1972 by U. P. D. Publishing Corporation. First published in Worlds of If, August 1972.
“The Things That Happen.” Copyright © 1985 by Davis Publications. First published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, October 1985.
“The High Test.” Copyright © 1983 by Davis Publications. First published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, June 1983.
“My Lady Green Sleeves.” Copyright © 1957 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation. First published in Galaxy Science Fiction, February 1957.
“The Kindly Isle.” Copyright © 1984 by Davis Publications. First published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, November 1984.
“The Middle of Nowhere.” Copyright © 1955 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation. First published in Galaxy Science Fiction, May 1955.
“I Remember a Winter.” Copyright © 1972 by Damon Knight. First published in Orbit 11, edited by Damon Knight (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972).
“The Greening of Bed-Stuy.” Copyright © 1984 by Mercury Press. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 1984.
“To See Another Mountain.” Copyright © 1959 by Mercury Press. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1959.
“The Mapmakers.” Copyright © 1955 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation. First published in Galaxy Science Fiction, July 1955.
“Spending a Day at the Lottery Fair.” Copyright © 1983 by Mercury Press. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1983.
“The Celebrated No-Hit Inning.” Copyright © 1956 by King-Size Publications. First published in Fantastic Universe, September 1956.
“Some Joys Under the Star.” Copyright © 1973 by UPD Publishing Corporation. First published in Galaxy Science Fiction, November 1973.
“Servant of the People.” Copyright © 1983 by Davis Publications Inc. First published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, February 1983.
“Waiting for the Olympians.” Copyright © 1988 by Davis Publications. First published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, August 1988.
“Criticality.” Copyright © 1984 by Davis Publications. First published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, December 1984.
“Shaffery Among the Immortals.” Copyright © 1972 by Mercury Press. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 1972.
“The Day the Icicle Works Closed.” Copyright © 1959 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation. First published in Galaxy Science Fiction, February 1960.
“Saucery.” Copyright © 1986 by Mercury Press. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1986.
“The Gold at the Starbow’s End.” Copyright © 1972 by Condé Nast Publications. First published in Analog, March 1972.
“Growing Up in Edge City.” Copyright © 1975 by Frederik Pohl. First published in Epoch, edited by Roger Elwood and Robert Silverberg (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1975).
“The Knights of Arthur.” Copyright © 1957 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation. First published in Galaxy Science Fiction, January 1958.
“Creation Myths of the Recently Extinct.” Copyright © 1993 by Dell Magazines. First published in Analog, January 1994.
“The Meeting.” Copyright © 1972 by Mercury Press. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November 1972.
“Let the Ants Try.” Copyright © 1949 by Love Romantic Publishing Corporation. First published in Planet Stories, Winter, 1949.
“Speed Trap.” Copyright © 1967 by H. M. H. Publishing Corporation. First published in Playboy magazine, November 1967.
“The Day the Martians Came.” Copyright © 1967 by Harlan Ellison. Originally published in Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967).
“Day Million.” Copyright © 1966 by Rogue magazine. First published in Rogue magazine, February/March 1966.
“The Mayor of Mare Tranq.” © 1996 by Frederik Pohl. First published in The Williamson Effect, edited by Roger Zelazny (New York: Tor Books, 1996).
“Fermi and Frost.” Copyright © 1985 by Davis Publications. First published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, January 1985.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FREDERIK POHL has written science fiction for more than fifty years. His novel Gateway won the Hugo, Nebula, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards for best SF novel. Man Plus won the Nebula Award, and altogether he has won four Hugo Awards and two Nebula Awards, among his many awards. His most recent novel is The Boy Who Would Live Forever.
In addition to his solo fiction, Pohl has collaborated with other writers, including C. M. Kornbluth, Lester del Rey, and Jack Williamson. One Pohl-Kornbluth collaboration, The Space Merchants, is a bestselling classic of satiric science fiction. The Starchild Trilogy with Williamson is one of the more notable collaborations in the field.
Pohl became a magazine editor when still a teenager. In the 1960s he piloted Worlds of If to three successive Hugos for best magazine. He has edited original-story anthologies, notably the seminal Star series of the early 1950s. Among his other activities in the field, he has been a literary agent, has edited lines of science fiction books, and has been president of the Science Fiction Writers of America. He an
d his wife, Elizabeth Anne Hull, an academic active in the Science Fiction Research Association, live in Palatine, Illinois.
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