Today I finish up with my reviews of some of the standout sci-fi short stories from 1970, as they appeared in the anthology World's Best Science Fiction 1971, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr and reflecting their choices from the previous year. As I mentioned before, 1970 was a problematic year for me but there were good elements as well: that summer was great, not because of travel or a big event but rather for being a quiet, peaceful time of reflection and relaxation. Not that I'm automatically opposed to those other things, but I'm more partial to taking it easy on my vacations. This was also the first year in the NFL that Don Shula coached the Miami Dolphins, turning around a last place franchise from the year before into a playoff team in December. Now here are my reactions to those final four tales...
THE SHAKER REVIVAL by Gerald Jonas
Set "way off in the future" in 1995, a journalist sends letters to various pertinent parties regarding the New Shakers, an exploding religious movement focusing on young people that he fears his own son may have joined. They practice the "Four Noes": no hate, no war, no money, no sex...and live together in insulated communes while practicing a kind of music called "jag rock". The races in this dystopian tale are segregated and blacks are severely discriminated against, literally confined to walled ghettoes resembling those which the Jews suffered through under Hitler's tyranny. The New Shaker movement appears to have arisen in response to an official societal emphasis the previous two decades on hedonism. Reading this made me think that Buddha would have had an issue with all the sides in this story: how about some moderation in everything instead of, like in a centrifuge, separating and pulling apart the extremes? Just saying...
DEAR AUNT ANNIE by Gordon Eklund
Like the previous entry, this is another earthbound tale about the near future, this time about how a wildly popular advice columnist in advanced old age has her identity and sentient memories placed in an enduring robot exactly duplicating her appearance, duping even her erratic, violence-prone and erratic son to believing she's still alive. Soon all society is under her sway and people are forced to attend special sessions that, with the aid of injections, have them work out and eliminate their violent tendencies. But now it seems some are immune to the therapy and Aunt Annie has a decision to make. A lot of science fiction tales paint a picture of a more totalitarian society in store for us...with all this political correctness/woke/cancel-culture going on around us it may not be "fiction" for much longer...
CONFESSIONS by Ron Goulart
Confessions is a funny little fictional stew of science fiction, murder mystery, and humor that works well as a professional freelance ghost writer (Silvera) chasers down a delinquent client (Scribbeley) for his fee. Complicating his task is that the client skirts about the world in a flying house...kind of hard to catch! But Silvera finally gets his man by sneaking in to one of Scribbely's parties with his friend Kohinoor...but the latter is discovered murdered and a police detective teams up with Silvera to find the perpetrator. There's also a little Robert Louis Stevenson in this story: read it to find out what I mean...
GONE ARE THE LUPO by H.B. Hickey
A hard to decipher tale, this is written from the viewpoint of a Moomie, the indigenous intelligent life on another world that a few humans of the game-hunting variety had settled and brutally exploited...they've already made one lifeform, the Lupo, extinct, and now they use Moomies as menial labor, servants, and objects of entertainment by making them dance. The settlers have human visitors from other worlds and they ridicule the Moomie who is dancing for them. But in such a story as this, you know there is going to be a payback at the end...
Next week I begin my look at science fiction short stories from 1971...
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