SOURCE: "Interim: A Resurgence of Pessimism," in Frederik Pohl, Starmont House, 1987, pp. 122-38.

In the following excerpt, Clareson analyzes the pessimism evident in Pohl's short fiction from the 1970s and early 1980s.

Even while he was working on the early novels of the Heechee Quartet, in which Heechee technology and Broadhead's entrepreneurship at least began to end many of Earth's problems, when asked about the future, Pohl has repeatedly said that anyone more optimistic is foolish. One can sense a brooding pessimism in Pohlstars (1984), his "first short story collection in a decade"; it gains its unity from the sobriety with which he treats familiar storylines and themes. In one of the few narratives not explicitly portraying a dystopian future, "Enjoy Enjoy" (1974), Tud Coopersmith's job—with its unlimited expense account—tapes the full gamut of his reactions to a wide variety of experiences to be used vicariously by his...