Here are my reactions to four more stories from the year 1968 as they appeared in the anthology World's Best Science Fiction 1969, edited by Donald Wollheim and Terry Carr and focusing on their selections as the greatest short sci-fi tales published the previous year. Just a passing comment: for the sixties, as opposed to previous decades, I have been finding the stories often written in a difficult to read style, as if part of the "suspense" at reading them is to ultimately figure out what the heck the story is actually about, not so much what happens in them. Since I'm not into deliberately obscure and cryptic fiction, that kind of puts me off...and some of the following stories sadly fit that bill...
MASKS by Damon Knight
Off in the future as is usually the case with this genre, medical techniques have progressed to the point where the intact brain and nervous system of a man can to fitted into a newly constructed mechanical body, outwardly resembling a "normal" human being. But after the first ever such procedure, the results run into a snag: the recovering patient's revulsion at the messiness of living things. He has come up with his own solution to the problem, though...but the implications of his transformation portend future trouble. The masks within this tale refer to the patient's insistence of his own mask as well as those of others around him...
TIME CONSIDERED AS A HELIX OF SEMI-PRECIOUS STONES by Samuel R. Delany
Reminding me a little of J.D. Salinger's obnoxious, self-absorbed character Holden Caulfield from his classic novel Catcher in the Rye, the setting is once again off in the future as young Harold Clancy Everet sets out on his confirmed life of crime, along the way developing the talents of disguising and identity-switching as he rises in the underworld. One side story is the role of the Singer, a special person highly regarded everywhere who has replaced the movie/recording star in fame and respect as they go from one extravagant party to another. This is more a mood piece and examines the way the criminal, amoral mind works as the protagonist hops from persona to persona while plying his illegal trade and evading the Special Forces bent on taking him down...it also conjectures about how the duly constituted authorities classify criminal suspects and prioritize the pursuit of some over others...
HEMEAC by E.G. Von Wald
In a special boarding school completely run by robots and set apart from the supposed barbarian humans on the outside in a dystopian future, the students are taught to be robotic themselves, forced to dampen their emotional expression, living highly regimented lives and responding in the affirmative by saying "click". One student gets in trouble through no actions of his own, and he discovers that his robot world and its ideology are sorely lacking and crumbling...he sees what's going down but has been so well-trained that he is unable to interpret it properly and effectively respond. A story for all you out there who are allowing yourselves to be intellectually insulated and brainwashed by your preferred, slanted news outlets and social media feedback loops...
THE CLOUDBUILDERS by Colin Kapp
In a future Earth where humankind's abuse of its gifts of technology have led it to self-destruction, society is back on a more primitive level....but a secretive group called the Guild has special knowledge of the former years and is gradually seeding the world with its old discoveries and innovations. At the story's telling, hot air balloons are the mode of fast transit and towns...along with marauding raider parties...employ them. Jacobi, a Guild Journeyman, travels by balloon to Catenor where they are manufactured. He meets up with its leader Timor as he negotiates a newly seeded Guild innovation. But the raiders are coming and Jacobi must think fast. This novella's premise sounded eerily like that of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series whereby a regressed culture is meticulously and scientifically resurrected with the aim of avoiding mistakes from the past. Interesting...
Next week: more reviews of science fiction short stories from 1968...
No comments:
Post a Comment