The AI (Sigfried) that he wrote into Gateway had me noodling at AI (and writing BASIC interpreters, of all things) when I was in high school, in the 70s. Even though I knew the "compterese" bits he wrote into the sidebars of Broadhead's conversations with Sigfried were bogus, I had fun making sense of them.
So, I politely disagree with you.
Other computers-in-SF works that influenced me include: _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_, _The Shockwave Rider_, _The Adolesence of P-1_, _When Harlie Was One_, _Michaelmas_, and a number of others. I will treasure these books, as they got my imagination started early, and they were a lot more palatable than computer reference materials in those days, which were dry and rather hard to come by if you were a kid.
Some of us had our career paths substantially affectd by, in particular, SF writers of a certain era. For me, Pohl was one of them who, in part, made me who I am.
IMHO, I believe, HackerNews is a place for intellectual discussions related to hacking culture and I think a good and respected Sci-Fi writers obituary is a perfect but sad opportunity for starting great discussions.
So if you look into HN Faq Question 1's answer:
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. "
Yes Pohl's obituary gratifies my intellectual curiosity.
Sure. If you want to find out whether one of those people is relevant to other hackers, then try posting the obit here. If it gets upvoted to the front page, then you'll know the answer is yes.
It must be terrible to wade through the one obituary on the front page to get to the stuff you want to read. I feel for you, I really do. So much wasted time you could have spent reading about JavaScript or people's opinions about the accents of non-native English speakers.
It's almost time to start drinking here on the east coast and I still haven't seen a story about what Marissa Meyer had for breakfast. If only these troublesome obituaries about iconic writers would get out of the way.
Well I'd sure as hell rather see obituaries for SF authors than the stupid 'Site X is down again' notices on HN.
Pohl is part of the old guard SF, his writing has influenced people and technology for decades. If that doesn't deserve the front page then I don't know what does.
Let me get this straight: you flagged the post but you are whining because not enough people have joined you in disliking this? Truly an outrage. I wonder how we will all sleep at night knowing your inalienable right for the world to be just as you wish it to be has been violated.
Science fiction and speculative fiction writers have done much to inspire and shape the world that we're all making a living in today--do not begrudge those of us who mourn their passing.
