The Way the Future Was

By Frederik Pohl,

Book cover of The Way the Future Was: A Memoir

Book description

One of the Grand Masters of SCi-Fi relates tales of the early days of the genre becoming important.

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Way the Future Was as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Growing up in New York around the same time as Asimov was Fred Pohl, young, ambitious, argumentative, and occasionally brilliant.

We meet many of the same people – and see the same events – that Asimov describes, in a somewhat different light, as Pohl forges his own path through the emerging world of science fiction, as an agent, editor, and writer in his own right.

It’s beautifully written and again, provides a fascinating insight into that long-ago world, complete with its many petty feuds – that the socialist Pohl was banned from the first Worldcon only to start his own…

From Lavie's list on science fiction’s golden age.

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