The Year's Best Science Fiction 11

I have mentioned some of the trials of the anthologist’s life; but it has its bonuses, and most of them come in the mail. Sometimes it is no more than a sort of passing-train-window glimpse into another writer’s life—attitudes, work habits, motivations, satisfactions— in the basic bio-letter. Occasionally a correspondence matures into fruitful dialogue, and sometimes personal friendship. With Peter Redgrove, the very first letter seemed to pick up in the middle of a conversation:

About s-f—I’ve read it avidly—I thought it was because I had been trained as a scientist—now I discover that it wasn’t only my s-f reading that was exploratory of things in myself—gods, demons, blessed and cursed isles but also my science. Writing seemed to be able to take the mind and feelings further, so professional science had to take second place—I mean that my science was no matter of objective curiosity, but rather of feeling into the life of things (biology and chemistry).

For the record: Redgrove was born in 1932, and won scholarships in the Natural Sciences to Queens’ College, Cambridge. He has worked as chemist, journalist, and editor; spent a year as “visiting poet” at the University of Buffalo; is now Gregory Fellow in Poetry at Leeds University. He has five volumes of poetry in print in England (most recent: The Force and Other Poems, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), and another. Against Death, to be published by Macmillan here. He also appears regularly on BBC-3’s poetry programs.