"I'm pretty catholic about what constitutes science fiction"
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“Pretty catholic” is Pohl smuggling a manifesto into a throwaway adjective. In one breath he’s rejecting the genre gatekeepers who police science fiction with ruler-straight definitions: hard vs. soft, rockets vs. relationships, rigorous extrapolation vs. dream logic. The word choice matters. “Catholic” (lowercase) signals breadth, tolerance, an appetite for the whole messy congregation. “Pretty” undercuts any grandstanding; it’s the seasoned editor and career pro insisting he’s not here to run a church, just to keep the doors open.
The subtext is practical and political. Pohl came up in a field that spent decades arguing about its own legitimacy, forever anxious it wasn’t “real” literature unless it wore the lab coat. His line quietly reroutes that insecurity: science fiction isn’t a narrow toolkit, it’s a way of seeing. If a story uses speculation to stress-test society, economics, desire, power - that’s enough. The genre becomes a method, not a checklist.
It also reads like a defense of hybridity. Pohl’s own work, and his long orbit around editing and fandom, taught him that the most durable SF isn’t always the most technically exact; it’s the stuff that finds new angles on the present. By being “catholic,” he’s protecting the genre’s evolutionary advantage: it mutates, absorbs, crossbreeds. The irony is that this open-door stance is itself a kind of rigor - a commitment to what science fiction does, not what it’s supposed to look like.
The subtext is practical and political. Pohl came up in a field that spent decades arguing about its own legitimacy, forever anxious it wasn’t “real” literature unless it wore the lab coat. His line quietly reroutes that insecurity: science fiction isn’t a narrow toolkit, it’s a way of seeing. If a story uses speculation to stress-test society, economics, desire, power - that’s enough. The genre becomes a method, not a checklist.
It also reads like a defense of hybridity. Pohl’s own work, and his long orbit around editing and fandom, taught him that the most durable SF isn’t always the most technically exact; it’s the stuff that finds new angles on the present. By being “catholic,” he’s protecting the genre’s evolutionary advantage: it mutates, absorbs, crossbreeds. The irony is that this open-door stance is itself a kind of rigor - a commitment to what science fiction does, not what it’s supposed to look like.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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