Today I've reached the end of the science fiction anthology The 1980 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and featuring his selections from 1979. That was the year that the fledgling Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the NFL, after losing their first 26 games as a franchise in 1976-77, made it to their conference's championship game, bowing out to the L.A. Rams 9-0. The Pittsburgh Pirates, with their theme of "Family" after Sister Sledge's ongoing hit We are Family, came from behind in that year's world series against the favored Baltimore Orioles for the second time in eight years. President Jimmy Carter decided to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics after the U.S.S.R. invaded Afghanistan. And the Florida Gators football team, under first-year coach Charley Pell, went 0-9-1. That's sports...here are my reactions to those final three stories...
OUT THERE WHERE THE BIG SHIPS GO by Richard Cowper
The notion of humanity going out and conquering the galaxy gets a rude awakening here as an exploratory mission encounters an advanced alien culture already entrenched throughout it...and their unifying thread is in a special board game played throughout the stars. Back on Earth at a Caribbean resort a boy notices the returning astronaut who has introduced the game to his home planet, where it has become the premier cultural attraction. Using games as devices for peaceful interaction and education among disparate societies reminded me of the ideals behind the resurrection of the Olympic Games in 1896...before they became nationalist propaganda tools and then completely professionalized...
CAN THESE BONES LIVE? by Ted Reynolds
A young woman on a future Earth when humanity has become extinct owes her own resurrection to an alien race that returns one specimen on from intelligent species on each planet to life, allowing them to plead the case for their own species' revival. The woman struggles to justify why mankind should be given another chance...and then she discovers the answer. And that alien race itself gets taught a lesson in humility and perspective...
THE EXTRAORDINARY VOYAGES OF AMÉLIE BERTRAND by Joanna Russ
The idea of a portal in reality that leads to other places and times isn't new. Recently Stephen King has used this device in novels like 11/22/63 and The Talisman (with Peter Straub), Philip Pullman with the His Dark Materials series, and of course J.K. Rowling's Platform 9¾ from Harry Potter. In this tale a traveler in France encounters such a portal at a train station, and the woman there who rescues him from accidentally falling through it tells her strange story about her exciting and exotic adventures. This story was meant as a tribute to the great French science fiction writer Jules Verne...
Next week I begin looking at the year 1980 in short science fiction...
No comments:
Post a Comment