The Year's Best Science Fiction 11

I don’t know about science, but scientists are catching up with s-f—again. Last time around, we had physicists and engineers; this time, it looks to be the people from the “life sciences”—biology, medicine, biochemistry, psychology, zoology—who are turning to the medium. (Something new has distinctly been added when the Canadian Medical Association Journal runs a science-fiction serial, clearly so marked. “The Adventures and Times of Eosilred, Prince of Elfour: A Bloodtime Story,” by Ian Rose, is a pulse-quickening saga of vascular warfare through the main arterials of a universe known as “He.” And the odd thing is, it’s good.)

Meantime, poetry is catching up with science fiction (and/or vice-versa). In Britain, poetry-and-s-f has virtually a Movement of its own. Here in the states, the situation—as with fiction—is less focused, but the same trend is evident. It started in the “little magazines,” two or three years ago. Now you find Dick Allen in Antioch Review, Sonya Dorman in the Saturday Review, Gerald Jonas in F&SF, R. P. Lister in the Atlantic, Tuli Kupferberg in East Side Review—and how many others, I cannot begin to guess; I mention only those I have happened to notice—plus, of course, the original poetry-and-s-f man, John Ciardi. (Fifteen years ago, when Ciardi and I were both visiting members of the late Fletcher Pratt’s Chas. Addams household on the New Jersey shore, Ciardi was editing a series of science-fantasy books for Twayne, and it was from him that I had my first fiction assignment: a chance to write a story without regard to the magazine-market restrictions or demands.)