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Throughout the 1960s, Pohl was also experimenting with "sketches" in which the story proper hardly interferes at all with the satire or speculation. Displaying a verbal economy surpassing his previous efforts, they are essentially static, crammed with information rather than action. Four of them feature aliens, but not as the melodramatic menaces of hoary tradition. The first of these, "The Martian Stargazers" (1962), comments obliquely on our history and conceit, explaining through speculative Martian lore why they killed themselves long before men landed there. "Earth 18" (1964) is a fictional guidebook to the paucity of attractions Earth offers, despite continuing "development" by conquering aliens. ''The Day After the Martians Came" (1967) uses the Martians as the butt of racist jokes, irrelevant to a Florida hotel-keeper, but worth their weight in gold to his black bellman. And "Speed Trap" (1967) implies alien involvement in a suspected conspiracy to use travel, conferences, and administration to keep real research from being done. |
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The best of these, "Day Million" (1966), is a self-proclaimed love-story imagining really altered people and conditions in the future (the millionth day, A.D.). Genetic engineering and social change have modified the meaning of gender, the forms human bodies can take, and the immediacy and exclusiveness of a love relationship. Without actually telling us a "story," the narrator presents us with the two "genetic males" who "marry" by obtaining electronic replicas of each other to use for that era's version of a "full" love relationship. The jolting shift of perspective common to many Pohl stories occurs not once but several times in this story, as contemporary terminology proves inadequate, even misleading, for describing the future. The richness of this verbal experience may be marred for some readers by the narrator's direct address, even browbeating them into taking historical change into account when they look past tomorrow. The overall effect, however, is contemplation of, not recoil from, the supposedly outrageous circumstances, and vindication of the claim that this is indeed a "love story." |
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"Day Million" and The Age of the Pussyfoot suggest the maturing of Pohl and his greater control of fictional techniques during the 1960s. Editing as many as four magazines at once, he was living through a change in social conditions which, along with more important things, made all kinds of SF seem vaguely respectable, and both allowed and expected it to be all things to all people. Changes were also happening in SF, if not most overtly |
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