The Boy Who Would Live Forever
A review of the novel by Fredrik Pohl & A tribute to his life.
Book 6 of The Gateway Series
Tor Books
ISBN-10: 0765349353
ISBN-13: 978-0765349354
Skip to the sixth paragraph if you just want the review of the book.
Before I begin to talk about this book I would like to say something about the author.
Frederik Pohl who will be 90 years old this coming November, and is one of those authors and editors who shaped many of the dreams of my youth.
He is truly a Grand Master and not just of the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers Association). Along with Donald Wollheim, Robert A. W. Lowndes and John Michel, Frederik Pohl founded a Science Fiction club called the Futurians back in 1937. It was not the first of its kind. That honor should probably go to Hugo Gernsback’s Science Fiction League or perhaps to Sam Moskowitz’s Greater New York Science Fiction Club. What set it apart was that not only did it promote SF as a genre of literature; it had larger societal goals in view much as its name indicated. In some ways it was more like the British Interplanetary Society to which in the fullness of time Pohl was elected as a fellow. Isaac Asimov was a Futurian as was James Blish, Jack Gillespie, Virginia Kidd, Damon Knight, Cyril Kornbluth, and Hanes Bok. Those are a sampling of the fine minds and great talents that populated the group.
My Dad told me all about them as well as the first WorldCon which was held in New York City in 1939. That was the convention where Pohl and his gang of Futurians were the victims of the First Expulsion Act, for circulating a pamphlet said to be written by THE ASSOCIATION FOR DEMOCRACY IN SCIENCE FICTION FANDOM which infuriated the head of the con committee Sam Moscowitz because it mentioned how Sam and his cohorts had been censured due to “undemocratic, dictatorial acts” at the 1937 Convention in Newark. Holy Smokes Batman!!
That happened a decade before I was born and Fred Pohl was already a key figure in the history of speculative fiction. Looking at what I’ve said so far it appears that I’ve been leaving out his political leanings. In 1936 he joined the Young Communist League as did my own father in an effort to support and develop trade unions. By the time 1939 rolled along both he and my father left in disgust at the Stalin-Hitler pact, and as unions were by then an established power in the U.S. there was no reason to have anything to do with that failed ideology. In fact they were both aware that we would have to first fight the fascists and then the communists. Now I don’t want to give you the impression that my father and Mr. Pohl were friends or even that they knew each other. It was just that my father knew of and appreciated him and shared that appreciation with me. My dad was the one that gave me my first issues of Galaxy Magazine and Astounding Stories, both of which had for long periods of time been edited by Frederick Pohl. These were the ones that had covers which made my mother’s eyes roll up in her head because they as likely as not had the image of one or more scantily clad females struggling away from the grasp of a 3 headed nine eyed monster or an alien landscape with a rocket ship landing. Mom loved non fiction in a myriad of forms including but not limited to histories, biographies, philosophies and political treatise.
I suppose she thought dad had a bad influence on me. She was right. I may have imbibed my share of Bertrand Russell and Alexander King and thought Nietzsche to be peachy, listened to Barry Farber, Studs Terkel, Jean Shepherd, Carlton Frederick and Bishop Fulton Sheen ( to whom she was strangely attracted though she was raised Jewish and was on close questioning agnostic, but not on holidays) The bottom line was that I read a lot of early Pohl, his novels written with Cyril M. Kornbluth, Lester DelRay, Jack Williamson and almost every issue of Galaxy. My dad bought most of the magazines and because I was still a kid most of the novels were checked out of the library rather than purchased. Then came 1977 and the release of Gateway. I was no longer a kid. In fact I had been employed full time for about 7 years. I bought it, devoured it, and waited for more. I now had cash and credit cards and could not just read but own almost any book I wanted.
Apparently when Mr. Pohl was 58 he still remembered the wonder of being a teenager and when I read Gateway so did I.
Gateway (Heechee Saga)
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon (Heechee Saga)
Heechee Rendezvous
Annals of Heechee
Gateway Trip
The Boy Who Would Live Forever: A Novel of Gateway (Gateway Novels)
Coming back to the HeeChee saga 14 years after the last book in the series took a lot of chutzpah on the part of Mr. Pohl. He had nothing to prove to anyone in doing so. There are elements in The Boy Who Would Live Forever
My favorite character is Marc Antony, the Stovemind A.I. We first meet him cooking up gourmet meals for both humans and HeeChee be they organic or machine-stored minds. He is far more powerful than his regular duty would seem to imply and as the book unfolds we find he is also an intelligence officer and incredibly resourceful. To balance him out we also meet with Hypatia of Alexandria who is not so fond of the male of the species…any species, but has a real love of babies.
If I were to pick out the most personally interesting thing covered by Mr. Pohl on the technical side of things it would be the speed at which the non organic minds are able to think and act. Talk about multi tasking!! The A.I.s in Pohl’s future are fast, so fast that having to slow down in order to converse with organics is painful.
The best thing about this work as with every work I have ever read of Fredrick Pohl is his faith that we can and will learn to deal with extraordinary challenges successfully. He believes in humanity, warts and all. Although I loved the idea of revisiting the HeeChee and the universe that Mr. Pohl created for this series I found the overall book disappointing. Why? Because he seemed to have lost his way. Amid all the minutia of recipes and sexual couplings the impact of the Wan’s evil plot didn’t have the shattering effect on the reader as it might have done if not buried under so much clutter. While I would not recommend it as an introduction to the Gateway novels for those of us who are already fans it is worth the read.
by June Williams
V.P. Buzzy Multimedia (Sci-Fi and Fantasy Audio Books & Funny T-Shirts)
You might be interested in Frederik Pohl’s new blog, http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com.
I’ve recently published a new 900-page biography about the life and times of Hugo Gernsback.
The manuscript was found while I was in the process of closing down Gernsback Publications Inc. in 2003. It was apparently written some time in the 1950’s. It covers all the areas that Hugo found interesting: wireless communications, science fiction, publishing, patents, foretelling the future, and much more.
wow it seems so interesting. I hadn’t read this book yet. but you made me want to read it
thanks a lot
I’m curious. What part of the subject matter seemed to capture your imagination? I know that what I first read the Gateway series I was more interested in the idea of a penniless schnook winning a lottery that let him go to a place where essentialy he was in an even greater lottery where the stakes included your life and could yield almost any sort of result. Later my interest was more in the extraordinary differences between sentient species.