Frederik Pohl had become a powerful presence in GALAXY immediately upon the appearance (beginning in the issue of June 1952) of the famous three part serial GRAVY PLANET in collaboration with C.M. Kornbluth and that presence was magnified with the publication of THE MIDAS PLAGUE in April 1954 and the second three part Kornbluth collaboration, GLADIATOR AT LAW, beginning two months later...but it was with this story that Pohl established himself as one of GALAXY’s most powerful and perhaps exemplary contributor. Kornbluth had been regarded as the moving force and senior partner of the two collaborations and THE MIDAS PLAGUE was a story Pohl wrote unwillingly to editorial order...but THE TUNNEL UNDER THE WORLD in its striking and despairing audacity caught everyone’s attention. One of the earliest stories set in a landscape of virtual reality, the story portrays the advertising industry and its ethic in a fashion which seems surrealistic but that surrealism (in a technique which anticipates Kurt Vonnegut’s later novels) is only a cover for an absolute and grim reality. Pohl has two anecdotes about the aftermath of this story: in the first a stranger met at a party said learning that Pohl was a science fiction writer “I don’t like science fiction at all but I read this story years ago which I cannot get out of my head” and then proceeded to unreel the plot of THE TUNNEL UNDER THE WORLD in ghastly detail. In his second anecdote, Pohl described receiving a fan letter praising the story and concluding “This is the way that the world would be run if the advertising agencies ran the world.” Pohl responded, “Everyone who ever got into writing did so in the hope that at least once he or she would be completely understood. That letter showed me that at last, if only once, I had met that test.”ABOUT THE AUTHORFrederik Pohl (b. 1919) has been at the center of science fiction for three-quarters of a century. As an editor at GALAXY, Gold’s successor for a decade, as the editor a decade earlier of ASTONISHING and other competitors of ASTOUNDING, as the science fiction editor at Bantam Books and as an editor of the first original anthology series, STAR SCIENCE FICTION, Pohl has been perhaps more influential than any editor other than John W. Campbell. His novels and short stories alone or in collaboration since THE SPACE MERCHANTS have been at the cutting edge of the field; GATEWAY and MAN PLUS each won both Nebula and Hugo in successive years. Writers he first published or made prominent as an editor include R.A. Lafferty, Cordwainer Smith and Joanna Russ. His mainstream novel, THE YEARS OF THE CITY is probably his finest. He is a Grandmaster of the Science Fiction Writers of America. His most recent novel, published in 2011 is ALL THE LIVES HE LED.ABOUT THE SERIESHorace Gold led GALAXY magazine from its first issue dated October 1950 to science fiction’s most admired, widely circulated and influential magazine throughout its initial decade. Its legendary importance came from publication of full length novels, novellas and novelettes. GALAXY published nearly every giant in the science fiction field.The Galaxy Project is a selection of the best of GALAXY with new forewords by some of today’s best science fiction writers. The initial selections in alphabetical order include work by Ray Bradbury, Frederic Brown, Lester del Rey, Robert A. Heinlein, Damon Knight, C. M. Kornbluth, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Frederik Pohl, Robert Scheckley, Robert Silverberg, William Tenn (Phillip Klass) and Kurt Vonnegut with new Forewords by Paul di Filippo, David Drake, John Lutz, Barry Malzberg and Robert Silverberg. The Galaxy Project is committed to publishing new work in the spirit GALAXY magazine and its founding editor Horace Gold.