Critical Mass Part 12

FREDERIK POHL has been called (by Kingsley Amis, in New Maps of h.e.l.l) "the most consistently able writer science fiction, in its modern form, has yet produced." He has won four Hugos, and is the only person ever to have won this coveted science fiction award both as editor and as writer. His work includes not only science fiction, in which he is an acknowledged master, but work as disparate as feature articles for Playboy and Family Circle and scholarly treatises, such as his biography of the Roman emperor Tiberius in the Encyclopaedia Bri-tatmica. In addition, he has lectured in Russia and at some two hundred and fifty colleges and has appeared on more than four hundred radio and television programs. He was recently President of the Science Fiction Writers of America, and is the author (with C. M. Kornbluth) of The s.p.a.ce Merchants, recognized as one of the all-time cla.s.sics of science fiction. He is presently science fiction editor at Bantam Books, and makes his home in Red Bank, New Jersey.

CYRIL KORNBLUTH began writing science fiction for publication at the age of fifteen, and kept it up until his sadly early death in his mid-thirties. In his own right he was the author of four science fiction novels, including The Syndic, a number of works outside the science-fiction field and several score of the brightest and most innovative shorter science-fiction pieces ever written. Some of his short stories and novelettes have been mainstays for the anthologists ever since and have been adapted for television production, as for example The Little Black Bag and The Marching Morons. His collaboration with Fredefik Pohl has been described as "the finest sf collaborating team hi history." Together they wrote seven novels and more than thirty short stories, among their works such cla.s.sics as The s.p.a.ce Merchants, which has been translated into more than thirty-five languages and has appeared on most lists of the most important science fiction novels ever written.