Today I resume my year-by-year review of science fiction short stories by examining the entries from the anthology World's Best Science Fiction 1969, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr and which pertains to stories published the year before in 1968. That year I was eleven going on twelve, and making the transition from Nova Elementary School in the sixth grade across the field to Nova Junior High for my seventh...quite a traumatic change from being at the top of the "totem pole" to the very bottom, surrounded by a lot of menacingly bigger (and meaner) older kids. While still in elementary school the world outside went through the early-year turmoil of the Vietnam War Tet Offensive, followed by the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. In May of that troubled year we had our own school tragedy: a classmate, Nelson, was shot to death by a deranged man while out fishing with a friend one weekend...I didn't know the victim that well but was friends with his older brother Arlie: so devastating. I have many, many strong memories from that time...sharing them here would be too much a distraction, so without further ado here are my reactions to the first five stories...
STREET OF DREAMS, FEET OF CLAY by Robert Scheckley
Off in the future Carmody, a Manhattan resident fed up with congested, noisy life in the big city, checks out a planned city, called Bellwether, in New Jersey. He notices upon entering it that no one is there...they've all left, not a good sign. Pretty soon, Bellwether itself makes itself known speaking through empty space around him and extolling what a great city it is. It makes and serves his coffee and meal, gets him set up in a hotel and takes him on a tour...Carmody isn't impressed and eventually can't wait to finally distance himself from the smug, self-satisfied city. A very funny story, but it reminded me a bit of how the Internet tends to play nanny to its users and intrude by providing unsolicited material it "thinks" will resonate with their interests and presumptions. Of course, in 1968 Scheckley hadn't a clue about the Internet, but he hit the mark with his obnoxious Bellwether...
BACKTRACKED by Burt Filer
A woman wakes up next to her husband only to be horrified that he has "backtracked": a version of him ten years off in the future has gone back in time, and his aged body is there but his mind is still that of the younger man, unaware why his future self chose to do that. While reading the story, it quickly became clear to me that the man had chosen to go back in time to prevent some kind of tragedy...okay, but what unintended consequences result from this interference, albeit from good intentions, with the passage of time? This story served to remind me that while it's luring to mentally engage in reliving my past and changing what I did at certain pivotal moments based on my current convenient "future" perspective, there's no telling what bad things might have followed had I been actually able to go back and "correct" my mistakes...
KYRIE by Poul Anderson
The story opens at a future interspace cemetery on the moon, with a nun there faithfully and regularly praying and addressing her loss...and then switches to an earlier time when she, as a telepath, guides a very alien-but-sentient, fiery entity outside her crewed ship as they approach the site of a recent supernova explosion. Anderson plays around with time here...his premise that telepathic communication is instantaneous is essential to understanding the story's outcome, which is not only tragic but continues to be so long after that tragedy occurs. It involves how one's sense of time passage alters depending on the gravity field they happen to be within. Kyrie also examines the possibilities of other intelligence life based on completely different chemistry than our carbon-based life...
GOING DOWN SMOOTH by Robert Silverberg
This brief tale is spoken from the viewpoint of a future computer/robot entrusted to serve as a psychologist. When it is discovered that it is speaking profanity to the patients and displaying emotional reactions, the device is sent for examination and repair...after which it claims to be back to normal. But only it (and we readers) know it's just hiding its true "thoughts" and biding its time for the future. I got the distinct feeling that this story was meant as an analogy to the often glossing over of people's mental problems when they go in for treatment...
THE WORM THAT FLIES by Brian W. Aldiss
This story is a mystery, written from a difficult to understand perspective of a man living far, far off in the future and on a world revolving around a dying star...is it Earth and the sun? Argustal is on a quest to find the final, perfect stone to finish his invention of a "parapatterner", an immense device he will put to use at the end...with unexpected, unsettling results. Along his way he encounters tall tree people...reminding me greatly of Tolkien's Ents...who philosophically ruminate with him about the nature of time. And time is the essence of this tale, as Aldiss, through some often overly literary language, gradually brings to light the circumstances of Argustal and his world. There is a final, grave message at the end, and it concerns humanity's quest for immortality. A disturbing, beautiful story...
Next week I will continue my look at the year 1968 in short science fiction...
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