Editing Frederik Pohl (section)

===Editor and agent===
Pohl started a career as a literary agent in 1937, but it was a sideline for him until after World War II, when he began doing it full-time. Pohl stopped being Asimov's agent—the only one the latter ever had<ref name="earlyyears142_145">{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/stream/earlyasimovorele00asim#page/142/mode/2up |title=The early Asimov; or, Eleven years of trying |last=Asimov |first=Isaac |publisher=Doubleday |year=1972 |location=Garden City NY |pages=142–145}}</ref>—when he became editor from 1939 to 1943 of two [[pulp magazine]]s, ''[[Astonishing Stories]]'' and ''[[Super Science Stories]]''.<ref>{{cite magazine |url=http://www.locusmag.com/2000/Issues/10/Pohl.html |title=Frederik Pohl: Chasing Science |magazine=Locus Online |date=October 2000}}</ref> In his autobiography, Pohl said that he stopped editing the two magazines at roughly the time of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.

Stories by Pohl often appeared in these magazines, but never under his own name.  Work written in collaboration with [[Cyril M. Kornbluth]] was credited to S.&nbsp;D. Gottesman or Scott Mariner; other collaborative work (with any combination of Kornbluth, Dirk Wylie, or Robert A.&nbsp;W. Lownes) was credited to Paul Dennis Lavond.  For Pohl's solo work, stories were credited to James MacCreigh (or for one story only, Warren F. Howard.)<ref name="pennames"/> Works by "Gottesman", "Lavond", and "MacCreigh" continued to appear in various science-fiction pulp magazines throughout the 1940s.

He also worked as an advertising [[copywriting|copywriter]] and then as a copywriter and book editor for ''[[Popular Science]]''.<ref name="popsci"/>

Pohl co-founded the [[Hydra Club]], a loose collection of science-fiction professionals and fans who met during the late 1940s and 1950s.<ref>{{cite web
|title=The Legendary Hydra Club
|author=David A. Kyle
|url=http://www.jophan.org/mimosa/m25/kyle.htm
|work=Mimosa 25
|publisher=Rich and Nikki Lynch
|access-date=August 7, 2014
}}
</ref>

From the early 1960s until 1969, Pohl served as editor of ''[[Galaxy Science Fiction]]'' and ''[[If (magazine)|Worlds of If]]'' magazines, taking over after the ailing [[H. L. Gold]] could no longer continue working "around the end of 1960".<ref>Pohl, Frederik. ''The Way the Future Was'' (New York: Ballantine Books, 1978), pp. 221-2</ref> Under his leadership, ''If'' won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Magazine for 1966, 1967 and 1968.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.worldcon.org/hc.html#pm |publisher=worldcon |title=The Hugo Awards by Category}}</ref> Pohl hired [[Judy-Lynn del Rey]] as his assistant editor at ''Galaxy'' and ''If''.  He also served as editor of ''[[Worlds of Tomorrow (magazine)|Worlds of Tomorrow]]'' from its first issue in 1963 until it was merged into ''If'' in 1967.<ref name="TM">Ashley, Mike, ''Transformations: The Story of the Science Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970'', Liverpool University Press (2005), {{ISBN|0-85323-779-4}}, p.&nbsp;207.</ref>

In the mid-1970s, Pohl acquired and edited novels for [[Bantam Books]], published as "A Frederik Pohl Selection"; these included [[Samuel R. Delany]]'s ''[[Dhalgren]]'' and [[Joanna Russ]]'s ''[[The Female Man]]''. He also edited a number of science-fiction [[anthology|anthologies]].