Day Million

by Frederik Pohl

Book by Pohl, Frederik

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, School, Anthologies, Collections

213 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published May 12, 1970

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

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review (for now) is solely for the title story, which is *wonderful.* Hasn't aged a bit: well, maybe a little. And here it is: https://www.baen.com/Chapters/9781451...
5 stars! If you missed it, or it's been awhile -- short, sweet & sexy. Don't miss!

Sample:
"[Don] traveled in interstellar spaceships. In order to make a spaceship go really fast about thirty-one male and seven genetically female human beings had to do certain things, and Don was one of the thirty-one. Actually he contemplated options. This involved a lot of exposure to radiation flux—not so much from his own station in the propulsive system as in the spillover from the next stage, where a genetic female preferred selections and the subnuclear particles making the selections she preferred demolished themselves in a shower of quanta. ..."

Times read: many, over the years. First published in 1966, and I just reread it in my copy of the 1967 Wollheim & Carr Year's Best.

Note that in early 2024, in a skim reread I saw 60s sleaze.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Day Million was Pohl's eighth collection of short science fiction published by Ballantine. He was a -very- prolific writer! The cover of the first edition, by Ian Robertson, is worth noting because it's a Escher-esque piece that suggests serious mental speculation, as opposed to the ray-guns and bug-eyed-monsters more usually associated with sf books of the time; Ballantine was making an effort to appeal to a wider, more sophisticated readership. It's also noteworthy that only half of the ten stories originally appeared in the traditional genre magazines, up to that point just about the only market for such stories. The other half came from Rogue, Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions anthology, and three from Playboy, which surely paid more per story than Pohl was used to seeing as advances for his novels. There's one story from his old pulp days, an issue of Astonishing Stories edited by Pohl himself, that serves as an interesting comparison piece, It's a Young World. My favorites are the title story and The Day the Martians Came. Some of them have aged a bit due to the intervening societal changes, but Pohl, in his day, was at the top of the form and on the cutting edge.

[Invadozer Misothorax Circular-thallus Popewaffensquat · Rating 5 out of 5]

This guy Pohl wrote some amazing stories way back
when and this collection is a real cream o
crop. The story "Day Million" is the ultimate love at first
site, you make eye contact, you feel the urge and
bammo! -get the contactee cloned and home quick for a good
sweaty pants off time.

"Small Lords" is the human giants in
lillyputland with laser slave burns keeping dirty work for the
giants. A grand ironic twist at the end in the perfected
50's style.

"Way Up Yonder" is planet Mississipi
with gone with the galactic war wind blowing in the
background. The real standout of this story was the
'roar-and-shack' music that the southerners are nuts about.
Bagpipe hell with a bad shortwave drone that no one can
seem to get enough of. I can't get enough and I haven't even heard
this music style yet! (maybe a little bit of The New Blockaders
Lp is up in this genre)

"Making Love" gets your
rocks off on lysergic drink, keeping the population in
check, making it with a plastic sex toy. I could
go on but I just want to say every story in this
book was a choice gem except for the last James Bond
spin story, which wasn't such a powered choco-blast. I
think with that one Pohl was just trying out a
different kind of style of writing? Something went
wizwacky.

One happy Mst. Ivadozer here. Thanks Fred.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

It even has the phrase "met cute" in it. I wonder if trans ppl think it's ok.... V. concise, no time to go into anything except to make a quick point that in the future gender identity and relations will be different.

(Just the short story, not the whole collection.)

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

Has not aged well. Science ideas are middle school level, and it's female characters are obviously objectified. Tries to write about robots as slaves, which does not offer insight, and talks about slaves' "voodoo."

[John E · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent collection of classic stories from one of the great satirists of all time.

[Robert Jr. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This took me a little while to get through the book. Overall, the stories are hit-or-miss and very few stuck around in my head for any length of time. My favorite story was Schematic Man. It was a tale in conversational form, a nice short one, about a man who has transcribed his mind to computer storage with a disturbing ending. I also liked Day Million, a “love story” where the pair of lovers are only connected via a VR simulacrum of the other. One of the two would be considered transgendered. I was impressed by the progressive attitude of the story as it was first published in the 1960's.

There are also bits here-and-there that I found interesting.

The tapes had only four sounds – a “white” hiss as they entered, a five-minute 420-cycle whine for conversation, an ecstatic eep! eep! And an infrasonic drone diminishing at the end. It was the mind of the patron that put meaning into the electronic squeal, just as it was his mind that painted features on the caricature of a face and saw landscapes in the abstract play of light on the walls. [pg.65]

This passage reminds me of listening to Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, which I have done several times, the last time, about two weeks ago.

The colonel threw himself into a chair, breathing hard. “Later,” he said. “Oh, that roar! You have to come and hear it for yourself, Sutherland. But let me get my breath first. Grogan takes a lot out of you, you know. There’s plenty of them that can put out a dull beat, but for real emptiness there’s nobody like Grogan.” [pgs.83-84]

It Almost seems as if Pohl was predicting a combination of punk rock and hip-hop. However, that passage is from a story, Way Up Yonder, that I didn’t like very much. It’s a plantation drama with African slaves replaced with robots who practice ultrasonic voodoo in the dark while the other side in an interplanetary civil war brainwashes the leadership of this inexplicably antebellum Southern plantation planet through subliminal soundwaves hidden in transgressive music. It sounds much cooler than it was.

Which brings us to my least favorite stories. It’s a Young World, an adventure story where it follows a primitive tribesman as he avoids enemies and becomes a council member or something like that, it sucks. Under Two Moons, the last story in the book, was a future super-spy story which I just felt was blah. My least favorite story was Speed Trap. I found it uninteresting and utterly boring, I can’t even remember anything about it and I’m not going to try to refresh my memory either.

Overall, this book was okay. But I don’t think I would recommend it to anyone either, there are some interesting ideas in here but the reading experience for me was just bland.

[SciFi Pinay · Rating 4 out of 5]

An essential collection of hard SF short stories with wide-ranging and timeless social commentaries:

Day Million: a romance between a cybernetic man and an alien (LGBTQIA+) female trans

The Deadly Mission of P. Snodgrass: going back to the Roman/biblical times via a time machine to kickstart humanity's technological advancements by thousands of years ahead, from medicine and sanitation, to finding sources of energy consumption involving agriculture/transportation and space colonization -- great for humanity, right... (umm)

The Day the Martians Came: an allegory to cultural friction towards immigrants, colonies (i.e. Native Americans), foreigners, tourists, etc

Schematic Man: ...who is more 'humanly' you -- your own biological physical body despite your memory loss and senility, or the Turing-tested AI machine created in your own brain/mind likeness, one that will never forget every memory/experience you've ever had?

Small Lords: ...if humans were to coexist with insect-sized sentient aliens, would we remain superior to them because we are literally bigger i.e. who's more dangerous?

Making Love: controlling overpopulation while diverting libido with robots or mechanical dolls

Way Up Yonder: interstellar spy thriller + love story + robot slavery

Speed Trap: predicted virtual/video conferencing... in the same universe as The Three Body Problem, it seems

It's a Young World: a different path to immortality

Under Two Moons: (loosely) James Bond, in space (Mars actually)

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Day Million by Frederik Pohl.

A collection of short stories of varying quality. The first story, which gives the book its name, wasn't particularly good. Like some in this collection, it is certainly a product of its idealistic time, showing how much people can change themselves and society but ended up being unintentionally sad and alien.
I particularly liked 'The Schematic Man' where a man creates a digital duplicate of himself but loses himself over time, implying he is inputting more than just memories and programmed responses. 'Small Lords' - A team of space explorers crash on a planet of ruthless, half an inch tall aliens, 'Making Love', in the future all reproduction is strictly controlled and base lusts are taken care of through robots and subtle hypnosis. 'Way up Yonder' - A young man foolishly travels to a plantation planet with marriage in mind but stumbles upon strange voodoo robots. 'Under Two Moons' - A humerous take on super spies on Mars.

[Evan · Rating 1 out of 5]

My eyes glazed over for almost every story here. Each one is a rehashing of the most mediocre SF conceit and Pohl brings nothing interesting or noteworthy to the party. From reading his novel written with Kornbluth I had a little hope, but this was quickly dashed. I am certain that the good parts of his collaborative works are not written by him. His writing is so boring and bad that any remotely interesting ideas are overshadowed by his clunky writing. Every story is forgettable and nothing stands out as good. Often the style is snarky and annoying, or boring and lacks any flavour. Nothing redeeming in this collection. I will likely not read any more Pohl unless he’s collaborating with Kornbluth.

[Toby · Rating 2 out of 5]

Inventive, but really dated. I didn't enjoy the first 4 stories, so skipped the remaining 6.

2/5 Day Million - a futuristic love story, probably ahead of its time with regards to its sexual politics and ideas, but I found it crass
2/5 The Deadly Mission of P. Snodgrass - consequences of time travel, far fetched
2/5 The Day the Martians Came - a different point of view, and makes a point about racism, but a chore to read
2/5 Schematic Man - naive, dated, story about uploading your brain

[Rob Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

really fun 50s pulp sci fi

[Michael Vawser]

Different Cover

[Kay · Rating 3 out of 5]

read for school
progressive slay

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decent, and a true reflection of Pohl's genius...but, like most anthologies, suffers from the one bad story that bogs down the whole thing. In this case, the one is "Speed Trap" a sort of business chronicle/mystery that only attempts to be anything other than dull right at the end, at which point I had lost interest. However, it is balanced by such great tales as Day Million (delightfully weird) and the short but wittily cynical "Making Love."

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The great love story "DAY MILLION" by Frederik Pohl, which was first published in 1966, is chockfull, tiptop-crammed with tears, laughter, and poignant sentiment. The only difference is that there is hardly any story at all, and the "love" that we feel for the story is almost entirely intellectual.

[Andy]

ANTHOLOGY OF FRED POHL'S WORK.

[Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting social commentary of the time.

[SciFiOne · Rating 2 out of 5]

1984 grade D+

Short stories

[David]

The title story is available online.