The Year's Best Science Fiction 11

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Then the Lord caused to rain upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; and He overthrew those cities, and all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. But Lot’s wife behind him looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.—Genesis XIX, 24-26.

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I am pleased to report, Dr. Tschirgi’s note concludes, that I was laughed off the podium.

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.)

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A MAGUS JOHN CIARDI

A missionary from the Mau Mau told me.
There are spores blowing from space.
He has himself seen an amazing botany
springing the jungle. Fruit with a bearded face
that howls at the picker. Mushrooms that bleed.
A tree of enormous roots that sends no trace
above ground; not a leaf. And he showed me the seed
of strange lettuces that induce
languages. The Jungle has come loose,
is changing purposes.
Nor are these vegetations
of the new continuum the only sign.
New eyes have observed the constellations.
And what does not change when looked at?—coastline?
sea? sky? The propaganda of the wind reaches.
Set watches on your gardens. What spring teaches
seed shall make new verbs. A root is a tongue.
I repeat it as he spoke it. I do not interpret
what I do not understand. He comes among
many who have come to us. He speaks and we forget
and are slow to be reminded. But he does come,
signs do appear.
There are poisoned islands far over:
fish from their reefs come to table, and some
glow in the dark not of candlelight. A windhover
chatters in the counters of our polar camps.
A lectern burns. Geese jam the radar. The red phone
rings. Is there an answer? Planes from black ramps
howl to the edge of sound. The unknown
air breaks from them. They crash through.
What time is it in orbit? Israeli teams
report they have found the body, but Easter seems
symbolically secure. What more is true?
How many megatons of idea is a man? What island
lies beyond his saying? I have heard, and say
what I heard said, and believe. I do not understand.
But I have seen him change water to blood, and call away
the Lion from its Empire. He speaks that tongue.
I have seen white bird and black bird follow him, hung
like one cloud over his head. His hand,
when he wills it, bursts into flame. The white bird
and the black divide and circle it. At his word
they enter the fire and glow like metal. A ray
reaches from him to the top of the air,
and in it the figures of a vision play
these things I believe whose meaning I cannot say.
Then he closes his fist and there is nothing there.

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Ciardi’s column in the Saturday Review (where he also presides as poetry editor) is called “Manner of Speaking,” and in its flexible space he speaks in, and of, all sorts of manners. You never know as you find the page whether it will be prose or poetry, angry or tender, playful or professionaclass="underline" only that you will be marvelously well entertained, or deeply moved, or both, and probably learn something as well.

Last year, there was the “Alphabestiary,” running through July, definitions in verse of such diverse creatures as Kangaroo, Uncle, I, Werewolf, Gnu, and Victor.

Or the furious and funny answer to Kathy K. (and Kathy’s mother), when Kathy wrote: John Ciardi your writing is very bad in the book I Met a Man because you do not put perionds ...

The reply began:

Look, Kathy, look.
See the poet.
The poet is fat.
The poet is fifty.
The poet is dull.
He is sitting at his desk writing a poem ...

Or the one on getting rid of the TV set, which concludes: . . . these days in my house there are sometimes periods of silence. And who knows what heavenly dialogues a man may yet imagine given enough silences to start from?

Or The Refugee Angel (a, perhaps, allegory): Homesick for ourselves, we refugee angels inserted personals in the leading newspapers and became pen pals. It wasn’t, of course, the same thing as going home, wherever that had been, whatever was left of it.

But just to have someone to talk to in our own language (which we are forever inventing) is almost the next thing to a reality . . .

... A letter is an evidence. It can be folded and carried in a pocket and reopened at night and read again. And, during the day, touched. It is the next thing to being almost real. It is a thing and, therefore, partly believable. . . .

Ciardi was talking about soldiers, far from home. But what he says is at least as true for the sudden letter from a stranger that discovers a part of one’s own private landscape in another’s mind.

I spoke earlier of the letters that are the Anthologist’s Reward. Sometimes, they build up to a virtual chain reaction.