Pohl was one of the pillars around which SF grew after 1950. The Space Merchants ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Merchants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

Pohl was one of the pillars around which SF grew after 1950. The Space Merchants ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Merchants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Merchants ) is a remarkable cautionary tale, often mentioned. I also liked his Man Plus novel ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Plus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Plus ), which pointed out the uneasy relationship between sensory input and brain, at a time the subject was not yet popular. (The purpose of the human modifications in that novel is Mars colonization. I feel it is somehow a serious answer to Clifford D. Simak's City [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_%28novel%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_%28novel%29 ], a poetic tale where humans leave Earth to the dogs and go to Jupiter to frolic in giant kangaroo bodies ...)