Weekly Short Stories: 1978 Science Fiction, Part 2

Today I continue my examination of old science fiction short stories with this second installment from 1978, using the retroactive anthology Donald A. Wollheim Presents The 1979 Annual World's Best SF, presenting the editor's choices for the previous year's works.  1978 was somber, sad and a little scary regarding the news...especially with the Jonestown Massacre that November.  More than 900 people either committed cyanide poisoning or were thus murdered when People' Temple cult leader Jim Jones made that call following the shooting death of a congressman investigating allegations at their remote site in western Guyana.  I remember cult members who weren't there afterwards acting in complete denial of the chain of tragic events and their leader's culpability...it's scary because I'm now experiencing much of the same with those who idolize former president Trump and can see no wrong in him.  But back to those stories...

DANCE BAND ON THE TITANIC by Jack L. Chalker

The first-person narrator of this story is man with a recent tragic family past.  He signs on as a crewman on a ferry taking off from a very obscure port in Maine and traveling to one in Canada...but the maps don't even show it exists.  On the boat business is brisk, but the passengers, dressed and speaking from all parts of the world and different time periods, seem to shimmer and flit in and out of reality.  On different voyages a young woman passenger commits suicide by hurling herself over the rails into the boat's workings...can he catch her on her next attempt and stop the tragic cycle?  Yes, this story messes with your mind...the Twilight Zone episode Mirror Image has a similar "alternative universe" feel to it...

CASSANDRA by C.J. Cherryh

Reminiscent of another old Twilight Zone episode, The Purple Testament, a young woman, thought by others to be insane, cannot help but see the future in the world around herself...and it is full of apocalyptic destruction and death.  This brief tale has her going about her mundane daily existence while surrounded by fires, crumbling buildings, and wraith-like people doomed in the impending war.  But then she encounters a "normal" young man at the diner she frequents...can he be her salvation from all this? Don't bet on it...

Next week: more 1978 sci-fi short story reviews...