The Year's Best Science Fiction 10

Mack Reynolds is as different from Arthur Clarke in background, education, temperament, and personality as two good science-fictionists can be. Reynolds is a bawdy, hearty, beer-drinking, well-met-indeed man, whose most likely reason for leaving Earth would be to look into the political situation on Mars (and write home about it to Rogue magazine, as their travel editor).

“My mother’s people went to California in the Gold Rush,” he writes (from Spain, at the moment). “My father was twice candidate for President of the United States. ... I was once bitten by a vampire [bat—JM] and had to be treated for rabies, . . . Once while traveling across the Sahara to Timbuctoo I was kidnapped by Tuareg. ... I was once offered a soldier-of-fortune job for Chiang Kai-shek. ... I was once detained by the Jordan police because I couldn’t prove I was neither Jewish nor a Jehovah’s Witness. ... I once stole a perfect Etruscan vase out of an Italian tomb. ... And I once participated ... as an observer ... in a demonstration against the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. . . . Although I loathe being shot at, I’ve been in half a dozen wars, revolutions and military revolts. ... I once bought a Ming-dynasty vase for six dollars from a Chinese Communist. ... I believe the world is going through an unprecedented revolution, not only in the political field but in science, sexual and other mores, medicine and socioeconomic systems. And I’m all for it. . . .”

Reynolds owns neither a Questar nor Scuba gear, to the best of my knowledge—but he, too, is what I call a free man. And he knows beer and politics the world over.