It's Wednesday and time for another review of tales out of editor Gardner Dozois' anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fourteenth Annual Collection, and featuring his picks from 1996. This was the year that the Florida Gators football team under head coach Steve Spurrier, along with Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Danny Wuerfful, won the national championship, securing a rematch against rival Florida State after first losing to them and then incredibly seeing other schools lose upsets in their respective conference playoffs. And now to those stories...
THE LAST HOMOSEXUAL by Paul Park
This story takes a broad swipe at the junk science sweeping our society by suggesting a near future in which religious-based "science" carries the weight of law. Very sarcastic, and it's really not about homosexuals, as one of the characters makes bluntly clear...
RECORDING ANGEL by Ian McDonald
An unforgettable, vivid tale about a gradual but inexorable invasion of a different kind of reality on the Earth, most prevalent in Africa. The line of division between "our" world and that which lies beyond the creeping line is clearly marked as a reporter does a piece about the impending end of Nairobi while decadents there "party like it's 1999". It's thought the transforming Earth is a kind of alien terraforming for their own life forms, but someone has a different explanation. Pretty damned profound, it all is...
DEATH DO US PART by Robert Silverberg
The idea of being physically immortal, not susceptible to disease or aging, is examined as humanity in the not-so-distant future has achieved this prized objective...if the individuals undergoing the necessary treatment take to it, that is. For the few that don't, what used to be an ordinary, long life span turns into an ordeal of exclusion and unwanted pity. And people's values certainly drastically change with their expanded lifespan, as the author clearly shows...
THE SPADE OF REASON by Jim Cowan
An inmate at a mental hospital, formerly a brilliant physicist, is about to be released as he explains to his friend, the facility's night janitor, what brought him to be institutionalized. If you want your eyes opened to quantum mechanics, chaos theory and the limits to reason, then this one's for you. Very instructive, made me think (but not too much, I hope)...
Next week: more from 1996...
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