2.0
Black Star Rising
When a mysterious alien spacecraft approaches Earth and demands to speak with the President of the United States, then destroys a large Pacific island to demonstrate its strength and underscore its seriousness, you would expect the President to talk. Problem is, in the late twenty-first century, there is no President, not even a United States. In fact, in this world of the future, China rules the Americas; and to most people, USA and USSR are just quaint abbreviations in the historical dictionaries. Then the aliens prove unreasonable about accepting substitutes... so one Anglo rice-cultivator from the Heavenly Grain Collective Farm, near Biloxi, Mississippi, is forced to begin an adventure that will take him from peasant to President, from Pettyman to Spaceman.
FictionScience Fiction
RELEASED1986
PUBLISHERBallantine Books
LENGTH293
LANGUAGEEN
Frederik Pohl, Jr. was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father held a number of jobs, and his family moved many times in his childhood before settling in Brooklyn when he was about seven. He attended Brooklyn Tech high school, but dropped out and took a job to help support his family. As a teen, he founded the New York science fiction writer's group The Futurians. His first publication, a poem, appeared in Amazing Stories in 1937, when he was 18 years old. In 1936, he joined the Young Communist League and became President of the Brooklyn branch, but he left it in 1939 after Stalin-Hitler pact. In 1939, at the age of 21, he was editor of both Super Science Stories and Astonishing Stories, and regularly published his own stories in both of them. He married his first wife in 1940. In 1943 both the magazines he was editing folded, and he worked as a literary agent. During World War II, he served with the Army Air Corps from 1945-1945. He divorced his first wife during this period and married his second wife in 1945. In 1948 he married his third wife, Judith Merril, who he divorced in 1953, the same year he married his fourth wife, Carol Metcal Ulf. In the early 1950s his literary agency business failed and he returned to editing as an assistant editor at Galaxy Science Fiction and later also if Magazine. In 1966, 1967, and 1968 his magazines won Hugo Awards for Best Professional Magazines. In the 1970s he acquired and edited novels for the "Frederik Pohl Selections" series of Bantam Books. He also began to emerge as a novel writer, and went on to win Nebula awards for fiction in 1976 and 1977 and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1978. He married his current wife, science fiction editor and academic Elizabeth Anne Hull, PhD, in 1984. He continues to write from his home in Palatine, Illinois.
2.0
Black Star Rising
When a mysterious alien spacecraft approaches Earth and demands to speak with the President of the United States, then destroys a large Pacific island to demonstrate its strength and underscore its seriousness, you would expect the President to talk. Problem is, in the late twenty-first century, there is no President, not even a United States. In fact, in this world of the future, China rules the Americas; and to most people, USA and USSR are just quaint abbreviations in the historical dictionaries. Then the aliens prove unreasonable about accepting substitutes... so one Anglo rice-cultivator from the Heavenly Grain Collective Farm, near Biloxi, Mississippi, is forced to begin an adventure that will take him from peasant to President, from Pettyman to Spaceman.
FictionScience Fiction
RELEASED1986
PUBLISHERBallantine Books
LENGTH293
LANGUAGEEN
Frederik Pohl, Jr. was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father held a number of jobs, and his family moved many times in his childhood before settling in Brooklyn when he was about seven. He attended Brooklyn Tech high school, but dropped out and took a job to help support his family. As a teen, he founded the New York science fiction writer's group The Futurians. His first publication, a poem, appeared in Amazing Stories in 1937, when he was 18 years old. In 1936, he joined the Young Communist League and became President of the Brooklyn branch, but he left it in 1939 after Stalin-Hitler pact. In 1939, at the age of 21, he was editor of both Super Science Stories and Astonishing Stories, and regularly published his own stories in both of them. He married his first wife in 1940. In 1943 both the magazines he was editing folded, and he worked as a literary agent. During World War II, he served with the Army Air Corps from 1945-1945. He divorced his first wife during this period and married his second wife in 1945. In 1948 he married his third wife, Judith Merril, who he divorced in 1953, the same year he married his fourth wife, Carol Metcal Ulf. In the early 1950s his literary agency business failed and he returned to editing as an assistant editor at Galaxy Science Fiction and later also if Magazine. In 1966, 1967, and 1968 his magazines won Hugo Awards for Best Professional Magazines. In the 1970s he acquired and edited novels for the "Frederik Pohl Selections" series of Bantam Books. He also began to emerge as a novel writer, and went on to win Nebula awards for fiction in 1976 and 1977 and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1978. He married his current wife, science fiction editor and academic Elizabeth Anne Hull, PhD, in 1984. He continues to write from his home in Palatine, Illinois.
