Today I finish examining 1983 science fiction short stories as they appeared in Donald A. Wollheim's anthology The 1984 Annual World's Best SF, spotlighting what the editor deemed as the choice tales from the previous year. Yet next week 1983 will continue as I switch to a new sci-fi anthology series, that one edited by Gardner Dozois. But for now, let's look at the last three in Wollheim's book...
AS TIME GOES BY by Tanith Lee
This is a story of time travel paradoxes and second chances, its entire premise unique and bizarre. You see, in this tale every star system in the cosmos exists in its own peculiar, different time frame...for travelers to interact between systems they must first go to way stations in which time does not exist. It is at one of these stations that the captain of a ghost ship, supposedly destroyed in space but continually sighted, enters the bar and is confronted by a young woman...the story goes on from there. The problem with stories like this is that as a reader I guess I'm supposed to be impressed by the paradox involved while at the same time meekly accepting the impossible "rules" the author has laid out concerning time and space.
THE HARVEST OF WOLVES by Mary Gentle
In a nightmare totalitarian future world in which people are only allowed to continue living if the State finds them useful, an elderly woman living in poverty must carefully maneuver around a young man...who she knows is an informant for the State...in order to preserve what little is left of her independence and life. The moral of this story that has a twisted ending: we all do what we must to survive.
HOMEFARING by Robert Silverberg
In this novella, a man's consciousness is sent into the body of another in the future as part of a scientific experiment, but instead of landing within a human being just decades ahead as planned, he finds himself sharing consciousness with a highly intelligent, evolved lobster in the distant future. Silverberg presents an intriguing look, not only of the possibilities for eventual intelligent life in the sea, but also a way that life forms could communicate through the medium of water by means of chemicals. The story is also interesting because, in the second book of Stephen King's Dark Tower series...which I just finished rereading...the protagonist Roland walks through mysterious doors that lead to similarly shared consciousnesses with select individuals from different times.
Next week I continue my look at the year 1983 in short science fiction as I begin the "new" anthology series...
No comments:
Post a Comment