The Year's Best Science Fiction 11

Mrs. Saxton has one thing in common with Walter Moudy: Both are new writers (although Moudy had two stories in print before this one, and a first novel since).

The contrasts—in background, interests, situations, occupations, temperament—emerge as much in the appearance of the two “bio letters” as in their content. Hers is on thin paper, typed in brown ink and elite type, under a “Leics.” (Leicestershire) country address. His is on his office letterhead, from Kansas City (Missouri), secretary-typed on an IBM Executive: Re: Biographical Data (“The Survivor”!:

I was born and raised on a dirt farm In Barry County, Missouri, which is deep Ozark country. I was the second child in a family of eleven. Most people would call us hillbillies, although recently the sophisticating effect of electricity and TV has somewhat blurred the image. I have approximately five or six hundred blood relatives in Barry County, and so far as I know I am the first to graduate from college.

In this order: I have been a farm worker, rambler, powerline-pole digger, migrant fruit picker, college student (one and one-half years), assembly-line welder in a General Motors automobile plant (one year), soldier (three years), college (AB), law student (LIB), lawyer, and writer. All of my college and law school training was at Missouri University.

I am thirty-six. I have been practicing law for nine years and writing the past four years.

No Man on Earth was the first thing I ever wrote. [A novel, published last year—and a good one—j.m] The second thing was “The Survivor.”