Today I continue my look at some of 1982's standout science fiction short stories as they appeared in Donald A. Wollheim's anthology The 1983 Annual World's Best SF, featuring his selections from the year before. The prevailing national mood back then was a bit somber and gloomy, what with a deep recession going on, perceived loss of American industry to Japanese exports, and a scary return to the Cold War between Reagan and Brezhnev's successor Andropov...not to mention an explosive situation developing with Lebanon's civil war in the Middle East. But here we still are, forty years later, with me reviewing four more sci-fi short stories...
PLAYING THE GAME by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann
Jimmy Daniels is a little boy living in a small town...whenever he wakes up from sleep, he discovers he is in a different alternative reality with a different home and parents who, ostensibly the same, have different personalities, states of health, and jobs. He seeks out the town's cemetery as one of the few places that seem the same regardless which "universe" he finds himself in. No one around him seems to think anything is amiss, and Jimmy is careful not to let on about his different realities...one of the best really short stories I've read recently and a great ending...
PAWN'S GAMBIT by Timothy Zahn
An advanced alien civilization, fearful of other intelligent life in their area of space developing into an aggressive threat to them, selectively abducts representative individuals from various worlds and subjects them to board games while analyzing their tactics and ways of thinking to determine their species' threat level. An Earthman gets kidnapped as well and devises a unique strategy of saving himself as well as his fearsome opponent from another system. I thought the author hit the mark, revealing humanity's great strength of being able to forge alliances in times of external threat...
THE COMEDIAN by Timothy Robert Sullivan
A very brief tale with a very abrupt ending, it appears that a sick serial child abductor is on the loose with seven kids already disappeared...and it increasingly looks like the man responsible is out to add to the total. Yet from his viewpoint he is doing good and is doing the bidding of a strange shape-shifting entity who likes to impersonate famous comedians. It all seems very sinister and dark...turns out that it IS very sinister and dark, but not at all the way the author builds it up...
WRITTEN IN WATER by Tanith Lee
After a planet-wide plague wipes out almost every human on Earth, the only survivor is an embittered hermit of a middle-aged woman who lives her solitary daily existence as if nothing has changed. Then one night a star falls from the sky onto the black field adjoining her home...but it is no star, but rather a young alien man. She helps him recuperate from his shock of landing and although he does not understand her speech the two reach a state of rudimentary mutual understanding. How the story culminates was pretty disturbing to me, and demonstrates how rigidly people can adhere to their old habitual thought patterns even in the face of cataclysmic change...
Next week I conclude my look at science fiction short stories from 1982...
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