Science & Tech Quote by Frederik Pohl

Pohl is doing that classic science-fiction move: puncturing the prestige balloon without deflating it. He denies the easy, flattering analogy between “the scientific method” and a “science fictional method” because he knows how often both get mythologized into clean, teachable step-by-steps. In practice, lab work is messy, opportunistic, and social; good SF writing is equally driven by hunch, taste, deadlines, and the marketplace. By saying neither method is “really practiced very much, at least not consciously,” he’s mocking the way we retrofit process onto outcomes we already admire. Method becomes a story we tell after the breakthrough or the bestseller.

The subtext is a gentle warning to both camps. Scientists shouldn’t mistake rhetoric for rigor: invoking “the method” can become a talisman that hides bias, institutional inertia, or plain guesswork. Writers shouldn’t pretend their plausibility comes from wearing a lab coat in prose. Pohl, a veteran editor and author from the genre’s mid-century boom, is steeped in an era when SF was busy marketing itself as the literature of the future, a respectable cousin of engineering and spaceflight. He pushes back on that sales pitch while keeping what matters: the shared commitment to being methodical.

That final pivot - “the fact that they are methodical does relate them” - is the tell. He’s not claiming symmetry; he’s identifying a common discipline: a willingness to follow consequences. Science tests hypotheses against reality; science fiction tests ideas against imagined systems. Both are at their best when they don’t just dream, but audit the dream.