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Pohl spent most of the 1950s and '60s fulfilling dual careers as an editor of Ballantine Books' Star Science Fiction series and the magazine Galaxy, while at the same time writing his own tales of near future Earths learning to cope with the ramifications of technological advancement. With the publication of the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Gateway in 1977, Pohl clarified an idea introduced in a 1971 story regarding the human race's advancement through its use of artifacts of the extraterrestrial "Heechee" civilization, not always for the best ends. The saga, which extends over four books written over thirteen years, shows Pohl to be an astute observer of human nature who does not flinch at the suggestion that mankind's future may not be as rosy as the image put forth through more traditional science fiction.
Pohl has spent much of the 1980s and '90s as a promoter and spokesman for science fiction. His strong interest in the impact of science upon civilization led him to write Terror (1986), Chernobyl (1987), and other nongenre novels that examine the point where science fiction gives way to science fact. He currently lives with his fifth wife, Elizabeth Anne Hull, in Chicago.
Critical Extracts
Robert A. W. Lowndes
When this (The Space Merchants) came out in Galaxy as "Gravy Planet", it seemed to be merely an entertaining hunt-and-chase thriller, with the background of advertising horrors for laughs, a satire on the way things are now. Since then I've taken a closer look at the gruesomeness of the advertising we have grown numb to and it begins to look more like a trend than a joke.
If advertising is used to sell cigarettes, chewing gum, labor unions, opinions of the NAM, candidates for election, and movies, why shouldn't it make the smart deadly move of selling itself? Self-preservation is the business law that works every time.
Could the American public be sold on the idea that advertising men are the aristocracy of the Earth? Could they believe that advertising is the foundation of American business? Could they be convinced that the first duty of a patriot and a man of principle is to buy things the advertisements tell him to buy, whether he wants them or not? ( . .)

 
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