Frederik Pohl, science fiction author and editor, dies at 93

Author Frederik Pohl, who over decades gained a reputation of being a literate and sophisticated writer of science fiction, has died. He was 93.

His wife, Elizabeth Hull, said that Pohl had died on Monday at a hospital after experiencing respiratory problems at his home in the Chicago suburb of Palatine.

Pohl wrote more than 40 novels, including The Space Merchants, written in the 1950s with Cyril Kornbluth, and 1978's Gateway, a winner of the Hugo Award for science fiction writing. He was a literary agent and editor before getting his own work published in science fiction magazines of the 1930s. He is credited with launching the careers of James Blish and Larry Niven.

"It is difficult to sum up the significance of Frederik Pohl to the science fiction field in a few words," Pohl's editor James Frenkel said in an obituary released by the family. "He was instrumental to the flowering of the field in the mid-to-late 20th century, and it is hard to dispute that the field would be much the poorer without his talent and remarkable body of work as a magazine and book editor, a collaborator and a solo author."

Pohl's career began in 1937 with the sale of a poem, Elegy to a Dead Satellite: Luna, to Amazing Stories magazine. He went on to edit Astonishing Stories, Super Science Stories, Galaxy and If magazines, as well as an original anthology series, Star Science Fiction. As a book editor, he worked on Samuel Delaney's Dhalgren and Joanna Russ' The Female Man.

As a literary agent, Pohl represented Isaac Asimov, Algis Budrys, Hal Clement, Fritz Leiber and John Wyndham.