The Knights of Arthur: Restored Classics to Go Edition

Frederik Pohl

Sep 2026 · Otbebookpublishing

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About this ebook

In a blasted America where the cities are dangerous, improvised, and half-dead, Sam Dunlap arrives in New York with Arthur, a suitcase-sized brain kept alive in a tank and fitted with typewriter keys for a voice. To protect Arthur and his mysterious cargo, Sam bribes his way into a hotel, then heads into a fortified, lawless former Macy's to buy an electric typewriter, a wheelbarrow, a rifle, and other essentials, discovering a city where canned food rots, skeletons sit forgotten in stalled elevators, and survival is ruled by cash, armed guards, and local strongmen. Back at the hotel, Sam finally reconnects Arthur to a typewriter, and their sarcastic, affectionate banter reveals the odd intimacy of their partnership. But danger closes in when Amy, a cool, pragmatic envoy for New York's powerful Major, arrives to buy Arthur as a solution to the city's labor shortage. Sam resists, only to be knocked unconscious and drawn into a larger bargain. When he wakes tied up, Vern Engdahl has already been negotiating, and the Major's strange postwar authority comes fully into view. In the end, Arthur is transferred into government service, Vern secures his own promotion, and Sam is enlisted as a clerk—another survivor trapped in a bleak, darkly comic world where loyalty, compromise, and the need to belong shape every deal. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.

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About the author

Frederik Pohl was one of the great imaginative voices of twentieth-century science fiction, a writer whose long career stretched from the pulp era to the dawn of the digital age. Born in New York City in 1919, he entered the world of science fiction early, working as an editor, agent, and magazine publisher before becoming celebrated in his own right as a novelist and short-story writer. Over the decades he earned some of the field's highest honors, including multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, and his work helped shape the genre's modern direction. Pohl was especially skilled at blending sharp social observation with speculative ideas, using futuristic settings to explore consumerism, political power, technology, environmental strain, and the uneasy bargains people make for comfort and survival. His fiction often asks what happens when ordinary human weakness meets systems too large to control, a concern that feels even more urgent today in an age of media saturation, corporate influence, and rapid technological change. Alongside his satire and social critique, he also brought wit, accessibility, and a strong sense of wonder to his storytelling, making complex ideas feel vivid and alive. His legacy endures because he treated science fiction not just as entertainment, but as a way to think seriously about the future and the choices that shape it. Readers who enjoy intelligent, provocative, and darkly humorous speculative fiction will find Frederik Pohl especially rewarding.

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