Forgotten Books: Nightmare Age -- Frederik Pohl

The recent death of Frederik Pohl sent me to my bookshelves, and the first book by him that I saw was the anthology he edited in 1970.  I thought it would be a good one to remember today because of Pohl's interest in the environment, an interest that continued right up until his death.  (Some of his very last blog posts were about fracking.)  Many of the stories will be familiar to readers of this blog, as a glance at the table of contents will reveal.  Maybe the most surprising name to appear there is the first one.  The predictions in his contribution (including the death of the ocean in 1979 and the presidency of Edward Kennedy) haven't come true, but conditions haven't really improved much in the last 43 years.  Some of you might be thinking that we're indeed living in the age of "The Marching Morons," but then I remember hearing Howard Waldrop proclaim that to be true about 30 years ago.  And that's the scary thing about this book.  These stories, all of them well over 40 years old and some decades older than that, seem just as fresh and as frightening as they were long ago.  As I said about Ehrlich's "Eco-Catastrophe," things haven't improved.  Somehow, however, that doesn't mean the stories are depressing.  They're bracing reading.  If you happen to run across this anthology, pick it up and read a few of the stories.  It's worth your time.