Let The Ants Try by Frederik Pohl

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You’ve heard of the man who had everything, well today’s author is the man who did everything! He accomplished far more in his life than most, yet he was a high school dropout. Born in November 1919 in New York, as is often the case, this science fiction author started out as a sci-fi fan. Along with Isaac Asimov, C.M. Kornbluth, and others he formed a group known as the Futurians which broke off from the Greater New York Science Fiction Club. The author once said and I quote, “We changed clubs the way Detroit changes tailfins, every year had a new one, and last year's was junk.” He would form lasting relationships with members of the group and many of them rose to sci-fi success. 

Frederik Pohl’s work was first published in 1937 and he began his career as a literary agent that same year. He was Isaac Asimov’s agent, the only one he ever had, then he started editing not one, but two magazines, Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories. He was only 20! His stories often appeared in these magazines but never under his own name. Stories he wrote with C.M. Kornbluth were credited to S. D. Gottesman or Scott Mariner, other stories were credited to Paul Dennis Lavond or, as is the case with today’s story James MacCreigh. 

Then came World War II. Pohl served as an Army weatherman in Italy. After the war he wrote advertising copy, became a literary agent again, and started writing a lot, quite often with his friend C.M. Kornbluth.

He would become an editor for two magazines again, this time, Galaxy and If, Worlds of science Fiction. Pohl won more than his share of awards, a Hugo for best magazine in 1966, 1967 and 1968. In 1976 he won the Nebula award given by the group now known as the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He won another Nebula the next year and a Hugo in 1978. There are simply too many awards to mention them all. He wrote more than 65 novels, more than 150 short stories and he kept writing. His last collaborative effort was 2008’s The Last Theorem with Arthur C. Clarke and he won his last Hugo in 2010!

Let’s go back in time more than 72 years ago to the pages of Planet Stories magazine and listen to the words from a Sci-Fi Superstar, Let The Ants Try by Frederic Pohl...

In 1936 Pohl and around a dozen other sci-fi enthusiasts gathered in the back room of a bar in Philadelphia for what many regard as the world’s first science fiction “convention.”

Next week on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast They opened the ruins to tourists at a dollar a head but they reckoned without The Old Martians. Thanks for listening and we hope you’ll join us next week onThe Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, with at least one lost vintage sci-fi short story in every episode.

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