It's Wednesday, so time again for another retrospective look at science fiction short stories. We're currently examining material from 1996, selected by editor (and sci-fi writer) Gardner Dozois for his anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fourteenth Annual Collection. In 1996 Bill Clinton ran for his reelection as U.S. President against Republican Bob Dole, then the Senate Majority Leader, and independent candidate H. Ross Perot. A surging American economy pretty much helped glide Clinton to easy victory...although truth be told, I kind of liked Dole, along with his VP running mate Jack Kemp, and voted for them instead. I still think Dole would have been a good president. But back to those stories...
THIRTEEN PHANTASMS by James P. Blaylock
The closing scene in the great old Disney movie Pinocchio, in which Jiminy Cricket goes on vacation by jumping into a matchbox and mailing himself off to an exotic locale, somehow comes to mind with this wistful tale of a man who finds a strange, but tenuous link to the past, some fifty years earlier but with some very interesting people. A thoroughly enjoyable read...
PRIMROSE AND THORN by Bud Sparhawk
Having read Herman Melville's classic whaling novel Moby Dick, I've already experienced detail overload about sailing with stuff I had no idea of what the author was talking about. Ditto for this story about sailing competitors on a long race, except that their ships have been modified for the fluid-but-greatly-different conditions on the planet Jupiter's surface. In spite of feeling over my head about the technical details, the author spun a very exciting tale about peril and rescue on the high "seas"...
THE MIRACLE OF IVAR AVENUE by John Kessel
After a Hollywood producer's corpse is fished out of the water, the investigator is surprised to discover that, even with the body convincingly identified, the producer himself is still alive and thriving. Two identical bodies, the same person, what a mystery! Well, it's solved of course, and as with today's other two stories, this one reminded me of something else: that comeback 2009 Star Trek movie starring Chris Pine...and the two Spocks...
Next week I will continue looking back at the year 1996 in short science fiction...
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