Gateways (62 page)

The Professional Ethical Calculators required that the usual warning be prepared and delivered to the planet in question. The planet would be watched for at least one hundred of its solar orbits to assure the warning had been continuously visible and to allow the creatures there to correct themselves if they would, though, as one PECSNIF said to another at the time,
“Do not feel it necessary or appropriate at any point during the next hundred years to restrain the continued and usual functions of your aspirating organs.”
At the end of that time, any corrected OBBUs would be spared, while all the uncorrected, filthy, depraved bisexuals on the planet would simply . . . go.

It was later recalled among amused PECSNIFs who viewed the oglers left upon
Urth
that for decades afterward, OBBUs on
Urth
sniggered at or ignored the bearded old creatures walking through their cities with their signs:
THE END IS NEAR. REPENT. THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END
. Because the sign carriers offered no wish images at all, not a single OBBU during the entire century bothered to ask who sent them or what it all meant.

During the long years between knowing I “wanted to write,” and finally, “ended up writing,” I occasionally accomplished something on paper, prose or rhymes (from Bad to Verse). Sometimes I sent them off to no purpose and little encouragement. One exception was a verse concerning interstellar transport (can’t remember the title) in which each item discarded as useless by one planet ended up being purchased for some interestingly nefarious purpose on another. It ended up on Fred’s desk. He published it, and then, as I recall (it was a very long time ago) another one later on.

Many of my books have silly verses in them, including the “Hay Wainer’s Song” in
The Margarets
, and the “Horse’s Song,” which both begins and ends
The Waters’ Rising
. Each time one pops into my head (which is what they do, probably from some other dimension), I think fondly of Fred. His enjoyment of that silliness and the encouragement of publication kept me aimed at writing, one way or another for many, many years. I wish him a happy ninetieth birthday and send sincere hope that he will celebrate his hundredth with continued enjoyment of the profound silliness that seems to be our world.

—S
HERI
S. T
EPPER

The [backspace] merchants sell deletions and removals,
masters of the world (or so they claim)
they go by
many hundred different names
and live inside a giant block of Spam.

It quivers, as if alive, is fed
by tubes and tendrils, and is inhabited.
Portions are cut from it continually to feed the people.
Insidious, invidious,
(occasionally in videos),
the [backspace] merchants seek to sell you:
V1agRa and all its magical cousins
(If you had a larger thing in your pants your life would have been better!!)
(MAGIC PENIS ENLARGEMENT PILLS)
(She’ll love the new growth!)
(Make nights turbulent.)
Also, designer watches, diplomas,
diplomats who will entrust you with their missing millions.
There are girls in your town who want to
meet you.

The [backspace] merchants want so to delete you.

The [backspace] merchants click and they erase
our faces, so we keep on losing face.
The [backspace] merchants
offer relief from their own excesses:
The products will not work as advertised
The Spam is vast and must be satis.ed.

In the old days of the future
our freedom fighters lived deep inside the chicken meat
Their coffee was the coffiest, their dreams the dreamiest.
The rest of us craved and grazed our lives away
and wondered if we should emigrate to Venus.

These are the poles we navigate between:
Yesterday’s futures now reshape our days
into futures past, somewhere between last week and day million
as ancient as a black and white TV show, watched so late
and all the names we conjured with appeared to us in monochrome
with their faces, such young faces,
to those of us who would learn to be plugged in at all times,
they told us of the future, that it was what they saw
a Game of If when they opened wide their eyes.

So we avoided all their awful warnings,
ignored the minefields as the klaxons sounded
played “Cheat the Prophet” just as Gilbert said,
we sidestepped cacatopias unbounded
and built ourselves this gorgeous mess instead

I wish we could still emigrate to Venus.

Sometimes I wonder what the Spam makes of us:
does it define us by our base desires,
or hope we can transcend them? Like small gods,
the [backspace] merchants offer us all choices
and each day
we can be tempted
or delete.
They lay their traps ineptly at our feet.

The present moves so quick we can’t describe it,
so Science Fiction limns the recent past.
We future folk are just another tribe who
hyperlinked our colors to the mast,
When
now
is always
then
and never
soon
.
Our freak flags will not fly upon the moon.

Our prophets opened gateways, showed us pitfalls
gave us worlds of if and galaxies uncountable.
They made us think then take the other road.
But future yesterdays are growing cold.
The [backspace] merchants huddle in their meat
while we demand a finer, nobler future:
It waits for us beyond the blue horizon.
Our future will be glorious and gold.

If it lasts more than four hours
consult your physician.

For Fred Pohl, with infinite admiration.

When I was little more than a boy, I stayed up after my bedtime to watch a TV documentary on SF writers on British TV. I was thrilled to get to see people who had hitherto only been names—Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and, most excitingly of all for me, Fred Pohl. The idea that these people walked, had faces, were human-size, seemed astonishing to me. I had read all of Pohl, and Pohl-Kornbluth, I could get my hands on.

A few years later, the history of SF creeping into my head via osmosis and white knowledge, I bought old SF magazines in dirty secondhand bookshops because Fred Pohl had edited them; was impressed that Fred Pohl presented Samuel R. Delany’s
Dhalgren
and was uncertain which of them gained more credit from the presentation.

Time passed. I stopped reading a lot of SF writers whom I loved when I was young. I didn’t stop reading Fred Pohl.

This should have been a story, but it never coagulated, and seemed more comfortable as a poem: it’s about
The Space Merchants
, and what we ask of our science fiction, I think. And it’s a small and extremely heartfelt thank-you.

—N
EIL
G
AIMAN

There are grandfathers, and then there are grandfathers like Frederik Pohl. I’ve loved him dearly all my life—he’s my oldest blood relative, as he reminded me while I was writing this
very
slowly—and he’s been our family’s benevolent patriarch since I was born. In a family of activists and feminists and artists and politicos and writers and weirdos, that’s a messy, complicated role to play.

He’s never just been my granddad, though. A huge part of Fred, possibly the biggest chunk of him, is reserved for his made-up worlds. The lies (as I’ve come to think of them) that writers spin from truths we witness are as important as the real world around us. At a young age, I also got used to him being in the public eye. You can’t help but recognize a certain startled look on your friends’ parents’ faces when you confess that you’re related to a famous author.

Even though he spends most of his time hiding out in an overcrowded, until recently smoky little grotto of an office, his unusually athletic imagination has meant that people all over the world felt like they knew him. Some part of Fred was theirs. I share my grandfather with the entire planet—possibly with several planets, if there’s truth to some of his speculative predictions.

So I’ve loved him as family, but I’ve also looked up to him as a role model. Fred, and my writer grandmother Judith Merril, were my homegrown examples of how to develop successful careers. Both sides of him were equally important. The professional Fred proves over and over that it takes hard work to become successful in this industry, just like any other. Being a writer is more than just indulging the rush to write down some new idea in your head. It’s rewriting and tweaking and pushing past the feeling of being creatively tapped. For so many years, I watched him write four pages a day, no matter where he was in the world. I still aspire to gain that kind of self-discipline . . .

Fred’s shown me that being a gentleman—in the sense of being someone who always tries to treat others with decency and respect—is important. He’s always been a loving man who takes care of his family, holds up to his responsibilities, tries to do right, and lives by a strict moral code about how to treat other human beings. Despite the fact that authors have these unusual brains that allow us to see the world in caricatures and tragedies and silly little plot twists, we must never forget to leave our stories long enough to be kind and grateful to those around us.

My memories of him begin before my brain could focus on anything other than the fuzzy excitement that came with a visit: presents! grandfather! chocolate! Later, the images are more clear: a dapper, whip-smart man who could charm and surprise anyone he was introduced to and managed to turn some otherwise intelligent adults into starstruck, blathering idiots.

While I was touring with my first books or visiting for his birthday, he and Betty Anne provided me a home away from home. Sometimes I brought a motley crew of punks, queer activists, academics, and others through their house. Far from the usual grumpy-old-man reaction to my friends, he seemed genuinely interested in debating current affairs with them and finding out what made them tick. Being able to explain to people that my grandparents are some of the most radical, strange, and wild people they’ll ever meet is a matter of pride for me.

As the patriarch of a family in which patriarchs aren’t recognized and instead are frequently treated like they need to be taken down a notch (yeah, we’re a fiery, independent lot), he walks a very fine line that involves a lot of diplomacy. Whenever he crosses it, don’t worry, we’re all there to point that out. Lucky guy continues to learn from mistakes even at the age of ninety. But honestly, we keep him on his toes. And for the most part, because he treats us with respect and kindness, we accept that since he
has
gathered nearly a century-worth of life experience, whatever he says might be worthy of attention.