Below are my reactions to two more science fiction short stories as they appeared in the anthology Donald A. Wollheim Presents The 1976 Annual World's Best SF, which covered sci-fi published the previous year. I ran my longest single run until the year 2010, 14.4 miles, in March of 1975, making five loops around the giant block in Davie where I went to elementary school, high school and community college...I wouldn't top it until 2010. Gerald Ford was our president, Cambodia and South Vietnam fell to the communists, and the Miami Dolphins just missed the playoffs...for the first time since Don Shula became head coach. But enough of memories and history, let's delve into those two tales...
THE BEES OF KNOWLEDGE by Barrington J. Bayley
A space tourist of the future finds himself the only survivor of a ship to a mysterious planet, and soft-crashes on it. He discovers it is inhabited by something resembling gigantic bees and tries to communicate with them so that he can repair the ship's broken beacon for rescue. Eventually he discovers that his hosts feed upon knowledge embedded somehow within their own honey. And upon trying it himself, he goes into a downward spiral: what knowledge is real and what isn't...and who is he, anyway?
THE ENGINEER AND THE EXECUTIONER by Brian M. Stableford
An android robot has been sent to an asteroid in our solar system to destroy it by changing its trajectory into the sun. Why? An engineer working in its habitable interior has developed a type of virus that drastically alters the life it infects through spores. The engineer and his adversary robot spar verbally about their fate, and then in desperation talk turns into action...I thought the ending was top-notch...
Next week I review more science fiction short stories from 1975...
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