Today I look at three more science fiction short stories from 1981 as they appeared in editor Donald A. Wollheim's anthology The 1982 Annual World's Best SF with his picks from the previous year. My song of the year in '81 was the huge Kim Carnes summer hit Bette Davis Eyes. To me, Hall and Oates hit their peak this year with three songs: Kiss on My List, Private Eyes, and I Can't Go for That. Rush's masterpiece album Moving Pictures also came out in 1981 (with the songs Tom Sawyer, Red Barchetta, Limelight and Vital Signs) as well as the Moody Blues' comeback LP Long Distance Voyager with its superb track Gemini Dream. I could go on and on about the great music back then, but I'd better get back to reviewing these stories...
OUT OF THE EVERYWHERE by James Tiptree, Jr.
This novella gets a little creepy as an incorporeal alien being, while fleeing an equally incorporeal alien predator, descends on Earth and splits its consciousness among three people: a business leader father, his baby daughter and his secretary. The three, although still ostensibly "themselves", nevertheless seem to make their respective life decisions in a strange kind of harmony that ultimately leads to the story's climax surrounding a massive block of ice in the ocean. I didn't dig the notion of possession by another entity, but maybe some whose religious beliefs entertain this idea might go for it. On a more general level, though, it does give food for thought: are my opinions and hunches my own, or am I being manipulated through the media and news according to someone else's agenda?
SLAC// by Michael P. Kube-McDowell
A human exploratory party is on a distant planet to establish communications and relations with a humanoid species there...but their language in places is difficult to translate, eventually putting the party in peril. The story's title is actually their name for the flying predator/enemy they must contend with...only what is the true nature of "Slac//"? An examination of our tendency to ascribe intelligence to other species based on their similarities to our own instead of more objective factors...
THE CYPHERTONE by S.C. Sykes
If you had never read the wonderful-but-disturbing 1943 Lewis Padgett story Mimsy Were the Borogoves before reading Sykes' much-too-similar tale, I think you'd like this story of a boy who becomes addicted to a computer game...it certainly captures the way a video game can take hold of someone to the point where they can't stop playing. The father detects something wrong...his son's personality and outlook is drastically changing...and he knows it's this game he's playing making it happen. My suggestion: read Mimsy Were the Borogoves first...it's a lot better and more profound, and The Cyphertone strikes me as a major ripoff...
Next week I finish my look at 1981 in short science fiction...
No comments:
Post a Comment