Today I finish examining some of the best science fiction short stories from 1977, as presented in Donald A. Wollheim's anthology The 1978 Annual World's Best SF, providing his choices from the previous year. Enrolling in the University of Florida that fall was a major culture shock to me and a letdown as the teaching level there was far behind the more engaging level I received in community college...you might have thought the reverse would be true. Still, I have fond memories of this time...especially of the Reitz Student Union, Library East and old Weil Hall (across from the football stadium), site of the then-much more primitive, massive computers with their punched cards and miles upon miles of printed paper readouts with frustrating error messages: that's what taking computer classes back then was all about. And now I will reflect on the final three stories in Wollheim's book...
EYES OF AMBER by Joan D. Vinge
On Saturn's moon Titan, although the atmosphere is totally poisonous for Earth-based life, probes have discovered that this world with a completely different chemistry hosts its own life, including intelligent beings...but how does one communicate with them? A linguistics expert uses a landed probe to establish contact with a woman assassin there as she regards the new presence as her "demon" with its many "eyes of amber". Meanwhile on Earth, the man in charge of the mission wants to make it all a public spectacle in order to attract interest (and more funding), much to the linguist's chagrin. It kind of reminded me how the moon missions of the early 1970s were hyped and designed in order to jimmy up flagging public interest...
CHILD OF THE SUN by James E. Gunn
Johnson is a time traveler from a disaster-ridden future he wants to change, but he loses his memory at the beginning of each mission and relies on a tape recording that he had earlier made for himself. In this story, he must find the kidnapped daughter of a solar energy research administrator...the girl is destined to grow up to revolutionize science in a positive way, but first she must be rescued. This kind of circular time travel tale reminded me of two things: the television series Quantum Leap that pursued a similar theme, and Robert Heinlein's great old stories about this topic that have a circular, repeating aspect to them...
BROTHER by Clifford Simak
Edward Lambert, an elderly man living isolated in the rural northeast, is a naturalist and author. He often thinks of his identical twin brother Phil, who in his youth left the family farm to join the many seeking adventure in space travel. Over the years Phil would briefly return and then go back to his chosen profession. After many years of not seeing his brother, a professor visits Edward and tells him that there is no record of him ever having a brother. So what gives? The resolution of the apparent contradiction at the story's end was unexpected, and also reminded me of another: Stephen King's novel The Dark Half. Simak may well be my favorite science fiction author, and I have read him from childhood...
Next week I begin my look at science fiction short stories from 1978...
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