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displayed in his magazines, as the "New Wave" writers in England and their American counterparts rebelled against the old editorial formulas.
Long considered an apostle of doom, Pohl reversed his field slightly late in the decade, calling in an editorial for more hopeful and constructive stories in SF. Backing this call with at least limited action, he printed in Galaxy and IF, as other SF magazines did also, paid advertisements for and against the American presence in Vietnam, signed by other SF professionals, and announced a contest to seek feasible solutions to this problem then ripping apart the fabric of American society. But the magazines soon were sold, and he resigned as editor, entering a stage of depression in which he claims even living lost its appeal.
David N. Samuelson, "Critical Mass: The Science Fiction of Frederik Pohl," Science Fiction Studies 7, No. 1 (March 1980): 8788
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Martha A. Bartter
Newton's third law of motion, that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, holds true in Gateway in the psychological as well as the physical sense. Broadhead's reaction to emotional trauma is to lose his memory, to avoid the pain involved in trying to remember, and by quite literally ceasing to live on any but the most basic physical level. We have already noted that he refused to make the normal passage to maturity expected of a man of twenty-six and that he hoped, from Gateway, to derive eternal youth. Invariably, though subconsciously, he equates maturity with death; it is significant that these statements are recorded by Sigfrid but not recalled by Broadhead. Consciously, he equates positive feelings with youth: "I don't know if I can make you feel it, how the universe looked to me from Gateway: like being young with Full Medical." He is, moreover, a physical year younger than his actual age, whatever that may be, as the book opens, for he literally lost a year in the black hole. And there is no question that he has not been truly living in the sixteen years since he left Gateway; his life has been a mere holding pattern of activity, misery, and surgery: "I hesitated, rubbing my belly. I have almost half a meter of new intestine in there now. They cost fearfully, those things, and sometimes you get the feeling that the previous owner wants them back."
Physically and psychologically, Broadhead has lost both his sense of the passage of time and his sense of self. And his experience in the black hole

 
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