Frederik Pohl was een Amerikaanse sciencefictionauteur wiens werk werd gekenmerkt door een diepgaande betrokkenheid bij sociale en ecologische kwesties. Hij plaatste zijn verhalen vaak in complexe toekomsten, waarin hij de impact van technologie en de menselijke natuur onderzocht. Zijn schrijven wordt geprezen om zijn intelligentie, scherpzinnigheid en zijn vooruitziende vermogen om toekomstige trends te anticiperen, wat hem belangrijke onderscheidingen opleverde. Pohls verhalen bieden tijdloze reflecties op de plaats van de mensheid in de kosmos en de richting van de beschaving.
An alternative cover edition with the same ISBN exists here. Something Was Very Wrong, Out There Among The Stars...The interstellar transport had touched down on six other colony worlds - and all six had been devoid of human life. Where was everybody? It was almost as if humankind, when separated by cosmic distances from Mother Earth, could not survive.
"The Marching Morons" is a look at a far future in which the world's population consists of five billion idiots and a few million geniuses - the precarious minority of the "elite" working desperately to keep things running behind the scenes. "The Marching Morons" is a direct sequel to "The Little Black Bag": it is easy to miss this, as "Bag" is set in the contemporary present while "Morons" takes place several centuries from now, and there is no character that appears in both stories. The titular black bag in the first story is actually an artifact from the time period of "The Marching Morons": a medical kit filled with self-driven instruments enabling a far-future moron to "play doctor". A future Earth similar to "The Marching Morons" - a civilization of morons protected by a small minority of hidden geniuses - is used again in the final stages of "Search the Sky".