The Frederik Pohl Omnibus

by Frederik Pohl

Frederik Pohl, co-author with the late, great C.M. Kornbluth of such modern classics of science fiction as "the Space Merchants", "Gladiator-at-Law" and "Wolfbane", is one of the biggest names in SF today. His stories explore facets of our future on Earth and in space with wit, a daringly speculative intelligence and supreme narrative skill.

This volume is an outstanding collection - eight novelettes and five shortstories - of Frederik Pohl's shorter work. Here is science fiction at its most stimulating.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction

348 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Frederik George Pohl, Jr. was an American science fiction writer, editor and fan, with a career spanning over seventy years. From about 1959 until 1969, Pohl edited Galaxy magazine and its sister magazine IF winning the Hugo for IF three years in a row. His writing also won him three Hugos and multiple Nebula Awards. He became a Nebula Grand Master in 1993.

Reviews

[Adrian]

Ad Hoc read November 2025

I started reading this in NOvember 2025 in an attempt to get myself back in to mainstream reading, as I appear to be stuck in easy (but fun) Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novels.

[K. Axel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a review-in-progress and will be updated as I read the stories. This is also my very first Frederik Pohl experience and if the first story is any indicator of what is to come, I have much to look forward to.

The Man Who Ate the World (29 pages) is a tragic story about a boy who grew up among robots, neglected by his parents. He ended up the ruler of a weird kingdom in the middle of an ocean. This is the story of how he was healed and quite possibly, how the world was saved from a terrible threat. This must be the weirdest science fiction shortstory that I've ever read, but also one of the most beautiful. I loved every second of it and can highly recommend it. (4 stars)

The Seven Deadly Virtues (29 pages) is a story from Venus about two lovers with an enemy. Society on Venus has evolved in a slightly different direction than on earth and when people decide to live on Venus, they are "conditioned". This means that they cannot kill or even harm another person, however, Venusians do have a way to get revenge over their enemies. I definitely liked the setting more than I liked the story, but overall, this was a worthwhile read. (3 stars)

The Day the Icicle Works Closed (33 pages) is a story set on Altair Nine, a planet far far away. There is only two things to do on this planet, work on the Icicle Works (not sure exactly what this is, though) or hunt Skyfish (a tourist attraction). However, this story starts a little different, with 6 people accused of kidnapping the Mayor's son. The main character is Milo Pulcher, a lawyer working on the case on behalf of the accused. The story also introducing a new technology called "renting". When a person "rents" out his body, a tourist inhabits it. With this story it became clear that Frederik Pohl loves a good mystery. It was an ok read, but there were a couple of hard spots along the way. (2.5 stars)

The Knights of Arthur (39 pages) is about three friends, Sam, Vern and... Arthur. Arthur is a pross - a prostethic man - an artificial intelligence. Sam and Vern are his... knights. This is a fun little post-apocalyptic story set in New York, but it isn't as dark and pessimistic as most post-apocalyptic stories. This story didn't really open up to me before I was halfway through it, but then it really invited me in! Recommended! (3.5 stars)

Mars by Moonlight (40 pages) is a story set on... yes, you guessed it... Mars. Or is it? Throughout the story the people who inhabits the penal colony on Mars are wondering whether or not their world is real and makes any sense. I liked the idea, a lot, but... the story (although the longest so far) seem to end rather abrupt and without any real answers. (3 stars)

The Haunted Corpse (14 pages) is a difficult story to review. It took me a while to figure out what it was all about, and by then, the story was almost finished. This story is about a "weapon" which can do something extraordinary... it can... no wait, you have to read the story to find out what it can do. It had far too many characters that you only get to know by name... a little difficult to read. (2 stars)

The Middle of Nowhere (17 pages) is a story from Mars, involving colonists, martians and strange weapons. I would have liked it to have been a bit longer and more character driven. It also paints the martians in the classic enemy image. (2.5 stars)

[Tim Pendry · Rating 2 out of 5]

This anthology comprises thirteen stories originally published by Galaxy from 1956 to 1959. They are very much of their time - ironical social commentary on consumerism, corporate and 'small town' corruption on other planets, alien threat/invasion and the threat of atomic annihilation.

What marks them out is style rather than content. Pohl is nothing if not inventive with his riffs on the standard themes of 1950s science fiction and it is true that his writing is fluid and that he tells a good tale but that style is dated and does not last well.

Pohl's adopts a jocular approach to serious subjects - in fact, it becomes his trade mark throughout these stories - while he relies far too often on the structural cliches of pulp fiction. The creativity is buried in a desire to amuse and entertain.

As a result, none of the stories are truly memorable while all are lightly enjoyable if read from an almost antiquarian perspective. It was not unpleasurable reading them but it was also not particularly stimulating or enlightening.

Perhaps the translation of the cliched small town corruption story to Venus in 'The Seven Deadly Virtues' is enhanced by its magnification of scifi paranoia. Perhaps sometimes Pohl hits the mark on (say) post-apocalypse or future technologies. But these 'wins' lie buried in his style.

The best story may be 'Mars by Moonlight' which postulates the consequences of alien invasion for humanity in stark and paranoid terms but its promise dies at the end with what looks like an introduction to a possibly dull resistance novel.

Another decent short story about Martian colonisation ('The Middle of Nowhere') also feels like a chapter in something bigger, an introduction to a war for control of Mars with native alien intelligences. Well written but half-baked.

'The Haunted Corpse' is really a Weird Tales shocker whose teeth have been drawn by the insistent quasi-humorous tone. In another minor and incoherent shocker, an alien arrives in a frozen but still civilised earth to become food for the natives.

In two stories, alien soldiers (or rather one is a sabotage agent) land on our planet and are merely translations of tropes (the downed airman and the infiltrating agent) from war and espionage tales with the science fiction (bottomless cases and purple armchair spaceships) just silly.

The two 'Pung's Corner' stories about a post-apocalyptic war against the machines that continuously produce for a humanity that no longer wants their stuff (a repeated theme) are so 'jocular' that they too become silly despite the assault on the machines being quite well written.

Pohl's world view might have been angry if he had not been so keen to be jolly. The repeated themes are of capitalist consumption destroying society (not the environment) and humans muddling through with little progression as they blunder through the universe or post-nuclear.

Pohl has been much praised for his science fiction writing but, in retrospect, these Galaxy stories feel like decently written hack work with more silliness and desire to amuse than any serious intent to explore the themes that clearly concerned the author a great deal.

[Mark White · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disappointing as Pohl can do much better. This is an odd collection of short stories and novellas mostly from the 1950s and they reflect some of the concerns of the time. Unfortunately they are often poorly resolved with unsatisfactory, deus ex machina, endings. Topics (sometimes recurring in multiple stories) include criticisms of consumerism, time travellers losing high tech items to today's inhabitants, nuclear armageddon, and sometimes a combination of these. The writing's solid and sometimes amusing but you get the impression a lot of these were Pohl working through ideas that sometimes didn't pan out, then wrapping them up quickly for publication because he needed the money. So possibly an insight into the mind of the author, especially when you see character names recycled, but far short of vintage Pohl.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's Frederik Pohl, so it's guaranteed well written science fiction. The odd - and either humorous or lazy - title of the collection suggests a career retrospective, but this is pretty much a run of the mill selection of recent stories published in magazines familiar from any other successful American SF writer of the 1960s. (Nine of the stories in this collection formed another collection thirteen years later as Survival Kit.)

It's an enjoyable read, with some humour, but not essential, even for Pohl fans.

[Anne Jennings · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rereading most of these, and they're amazingly fresh still, satirical and witty. A joy.

[Margareth8537 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite enjoy Pohl, but perhaps not all at once. Some are excellent, some only so-so