As reported in the New York Times (22 August 2009), Brooklyn Technical High School—aka Brooklyn Tech—has awarded an honorary degree to acclaimed (Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning) science fiction writer (Gateway, Man Plus, Jem and, with C.M. Kornbluth, The Space Merchants) and editor Frederik Pohl, who was briefly a “Technite”, though not, strictly speaking, an alumnus.
The rosy picture of Pohl’s time at Brooklyn Tech that he paints in the Times article (“I do sort of wish I’d stuck it out. I like having learned all the stuff I did learn there; I just didn’t like the business of learning.”) differs markedly from his account in his 1978 memoir, The Way the Future Was.
In his memoir, he grumbles that there were no history courses at Tech, and no girls. Also, as the school building was still under construction, his first year was spent in its Annexes (one of which he calls “the dingiest structure I have ever spent much time in”) and temporary “Main Building” in an abandoned factory. While dashing between buildings, he became “Best Friends” with fellow science fiction fan Joseph Harold “Harry” Dockweiler, the future sf writer Dirk Wylie.
However, his marks at Tech were “spotty” (he failed two drawing classes, one of them twice, and a math class), and in his junior year, he transferred to another high school. (The Times identifies it as Alexander Hamilton Vocational and Technical High School, The Way the Future Was says Thomas Jefferson HS. [An historian would consider Hamilton the opposite of Jefferson.]) It may not matter which school because “I didn’t spend much time there”; he “play[ed] hooky most of the time” and dropped out when he turned 17. (His most useful course, he reminisced in his memoir, was touch-typing.)
He held a succession of jobs: messenger, literary agent, science fiction editor (at 19, he was the editor of two professional sf magazines, Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories), and ultimately sf writer. As John W. Campbell, Jr., legendary editor of Astounding (later and currently Analog) and for years Pohl’s competitor, once commended, “Fred, you did real good for science fiction.” The Brooklyn Tech Alumni Foundation, whose treasurer, sf reader Jeffrey Haitkin, was the instigator of the honorary diploma (which Pohl, 89, has promised to hang in his office), would heartily concur.