The Age of the Pussyfoot was published by Trident Press in 1969, and it is one of Pohl’s most prescient novels — a work of science fiction that predicted the smartphone, the internet, and the sharing economy decades before they existed.
Charles Doolittle Doolittle Dalgleish Doolittle Doolittle — Pohl’s naming is more restrained than this — Charles Doolittle Forester is a firefighter from the twentieth century who dies in a fire and is revived five hundred years later, thanks to cryogenic preservation. He wakes in a world where every citizen carries a “joymaker” — a personal device that connects to a universal computer network, handles financial transactions, provides instant information, arranges transportation, manages social connections, and offers entertainment. The joymaker is, unmistakably, a smartphone.
Forester’s difficulties in adapting to this world are comic and pointed. He is a twentieth-century man with twentieth-century assumptions: he doesn’t understand the economics (everything is available on credit, but credit can be revoked), the social conventions (personal space and privacy have been redefined), or the politics (alien species have become Earth’s trading partners, and interspecies relations are as fraught as any human diplomacy). The title refers to Forester’s tentative, foot-testing approach to the new world — he is “pussyfooting” through paradise, afraid to commit to a world he doesn’t understand.
First edition (Trident Press, New York, 1969): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $20–$60
- Without jacket: $8–$15