Frederik Pohl gets a pacemaker

Frederik Pohl

89-year-old legendary science fiction author and editor Frederik Pohl has had a pacemaker installed following the discovery that he had a low pulse rate.

Pohl revealed the move on his blog, The Way the Future Blogs, this week, saying a nurse had checked his pulse when he attempted to re-enrol in the cardiovascular exercise group he had been attending three times a week since 2001, but excluding this year. His measured pulse rate was 41; a normal heart rate ranges from 60-100 beats per minute.

“This is not a pulse that is compatible with staying alive for very long,” wrote Pohl. “So [the nurse] Rose called Adrian Deme, my new primary-care doctor. He told her to get me to an ER for evaluation. And next thing you know, I was in a hospital bed getting ready for a pacemaker.”

Pohl appeared rather blasé about the medical procedure, in his blog entry entitled “Fred the Machine Man”, which was published with a 1924 diagram of an electric man entitled “homo artificialis”. He wrote:

“You don’t feel any pain. At some time when you weren’t looking the anesthesiologist has put that whole area of your chest to sleep. You do feel that there is somebody doing all kinds of unexpected things down there, and you aren’t at all sure that you care for it. But then that stops and you’re on your way back to your hospital bed, all done. And the next morning they send you home.”

Pohl is one of the most famous writers of the period which many consider to be one of the golden ages of science fiction writing; during the 1950′s through the 1970′s, when contemporaries such as Isaac Asimov were helping to invent the genre.

Pohl himself was one of the genre’s most prolific writers and editors, editing Galaxy magazine, acquiring novels for publishing by top-class writers like Samuel R. Delany and kicking off his own writing career in the 1950′s. He still continues to publish (his latest book, The Last Theorem, was published in 2008). One of his fans’ favourite books is his 1976 Nebula Award-winning book Man Plus.

Commentary
It’s amazing that Pohl is still continuing to write and publish; he turns 90 years old next month. He’s truly a great of the science fiction field, and if he can shrug off the installation of a pacemaker with as much humour as he just did, we expect him to continue his fascinating career.