Tor, 2002, 477pp, $16.95 ISBN 0-312-86876-6
In his short introduction, Pohl describes the background in the new SF magazines of the 1930s, and especially the role played by two successive editors of ASTOUNDING - F Orley Tremaine and then John W Campbell Jr. According to Pohl, Campbell wanted "the kind of stories that could appear as contemporary literature - in a magazine published in the Twenty-fifth Century". It was a good definition, though these five authors are not particularly identified with Campbell (Robert Heinlein, who appeared in Volume 1 of this series, and Isaac Asimov who was in Volume 2 are stronger Campbell "creations"). However, Lester del Rey appeared in ASTOUNDING in 1938, and then making an ASTOUNDING debut together in July 1939 were A E van Vogt and Asimov. Three of van Vogt's contributions here are ASTOUNDING stories - including "Black Destroyer" (1939: now admitted to be the basis of the ALIEN films) and "Vault of the Beast" (1940: which seems to have a similar relationship to the TERMINATOR series).
Mike Ashley's THE TIME MACHINES: THE HISTORY OF THE SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE VOLUME 1 (Liverpool University Press: 2000) covers this period in detail. He makes it clear, though, that synchronicity played a major part in the Golden Age of SF - just when Campbell took over, Ray Palmer was taking over at AMAZING. In March 1939 Palmer published Asimov's first story. The SF magazines were re-vivified, and the young Turks found new markets and discussion places.
Only the Lester del Rey and van Vogt stories come from this golden period - there is a ten year hiatus and then the other three sets are taken from the fifties and sixties. (The authors, though, had all been active on the SF scene much earlier). Only Frederick Pohl's "The Tunnel Under the World" (1954) is well-known, while I am surprised that I've never come across Damon Knight's "The Handler" (1960) before - it is a classic piece of paranoia and a bizarre case of the elephant in the living room forty years before that idea came into being. "The Tunnel" appeared in GALAXY, and the role of the big three post-war SF magazines I guess will appear in Mike Ashley's second volume. Certainly, magazine themes changed, and ASTOUNDING's metamorphosis ANALOG could never be confused with Herbert Gold's GALAXY.
Ezra Pound once said that literature is news that stays news. In 2001 BBC Radio 4 broadcast a full length dramatisation of "The Tunnel" - they did not have to set it in the past. With a third Terminator film said to be in production, and "Handlers" still of concern, these Grand Masters deserve their titles - their work remains contemporary. Read it.