Below I discuss the first three 1976 science fiction stories appearing in the anthology Donald A. Wollheim Presents The 1977 Annual World's Best SF, covering the editor's selections from the previous year. 1976 was the American Bicentennial Year with nationwide celebrations that summer. It was also the first presidential election year I was old enough to vote in, picking peanut farmer/nuclear engineer/Playboy magazine interviewee Jimmy Carter over Gerald Ford, who apparently hadn't been aware that Poland was a puppet state of the Soviet Union at the time. For me it was a more relaxed, introspective year...the last one I would ever spend living completely in South Florida. Anyway, without further ado, here are my reactions to those stories...
APPEARANCE OF LIFE by Brian W. Aldiss
A very complex and multi-layered story, a human of the distant future belonging to the Seeker class is exploring a galactic museum in the process of being built and stocked with exhibits...all inside a massive constructed belt ringing an uninhabitable planet placed there in great antiquity by a mysterious non-human race that preceded humanity in exploring and dominating our galaxy. In it he finds two cubes containing holographic images and programs of the personalities and voices of a married couple...long dead from an earlier war...and places the cubes facing one another so that they can converse. Doing this he discovers the meaning of life and everything...I said this was a very complex and multi-layered story!
OVERDRAWN AT THE MEMORY BANK by John Varley
Stuck in exile within the Moon after an alien conquest of Earth drove away humanity, what's left of our dwindled race is virtually immortal, with people's memories and essences storable and transferable from one body to another. A man decides to spend his vacation at an "inner-Moon" wildlife theme park and has his mind implanted within a lion to experience its way of life. But his original body gets lost and to preserve him, his mind is placed within the master computer while the frantic search is on. Another pretty complicated tale...you can't read through this one quickly...
THOSE GOOD OLD DAYS OF LIQUID FUEL by Michael G. Coney
In the future interstellar travel is commonplace and easy due to the advent of anti-gravity to propel spaceships. A man remembers the old gigantic, primitive spaceships that ran on liquid fuel and, hearing that a nearby shipyard of them is slated to be demolished, visits the site and waxes nostalgic on his youth and his friend who shared his interest in the rockets...along with the eventual conflicts that would divide them. A bittersweet tale that kind of reminded me how Ray Bradbury wrote...
Next week I'll discuss more science fiction short stories from the year 1976...
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