Frederik Pohl was born in New York City and attended public schools in Brooklyn. More interested in writing than in school, he dropped out of high school in his senior year and took a job with a publishing company. After serving in the United Stated Air Force from 1943 to 1945, he returned to publishing as an editor and literary agent. His first science fiction novels were published in the mid 1960's, some written in collaboration with other writers, others created alone. Since then he has produced a steady flow of novels. Pohl describes his particular kind of science fiction as "cautionary": the novels he writes point out the negative, long range consequences of present actions. Pohl takes… some aspect of contemporary society and projects it into a future time as if to say, "If our society keeps doing this here is what the result will be." He is particularly concerned with rapidly developing technology that is not matched by a corresponding improvement in the quality of living. According to Pohl, science fiction is "the only kind of writing which takes into account the most important fact of life in the world today: change."