Today I start reviewing 1984 science fiction short stories I read from the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Second Annual Collection. Among the first seven stories in the book are three from Donald Wollheim's series that I already read and discussed: Salvador by Lucius Shepard, Bloodchild by Octavia E. Butler and Press Enter by Varley. Each of them is remarkable and unforgettable in its own way...don't forget to read them. Of the other first four stories, here are my reactions...
PROMISES TO KEEP by Jack McDevitt
Set in probably our own times (sci-fi writers tended to be wildly optimistic about our space progress), a group of astronauts...along with a journalist...are on Callisto, one of Jupiter's moons. Humanity is out here exploring while enthusiasm at home on Earth has dwindled with funding for future missions and innovation seriously in doubt. As the group's lander ship makes a rendezvous with the main ship before returning home, a crisis happens...this story reminded me a lot of those I read from the 1940s and 50s, especially the ones penned by the great Robert Heinlein...
BLUED MOON by Connie Willis
When I discovered the gimmick in this story early on, I just groaned to myself, sucked it up and read on to the end. Out in the western desert a company is testing whether hydrocarbon wastes launched into a strategic part of the atmospheric would have a beneficial effect on protecting and restoring the crucial ozone layer. When folks discover that the moon has turned blue, then all sorts of hijinks result (along with my groaning). I take it as nothing more than a light-hearted tale capitalizing on a worn-out cliche...
A MESSAGE TO THE KING OF BROBDINGNAG by Richard Cowper
An altruistic agricultural scientist has discovered the means for a crop plant to generate its own fertilizer, giving it independence from the soil in which it is nurtured. The test sites for his project involve one in Australia, which he visits and which occupies the story's ominous, nightmare ending...one that I fear could actually happen. What a shockingly scary and effective story!
THE AFFAIR by Robert Silverberg
In this story telepaths exist, and it's possible for them to communicate over long distances with each other. The problem for Chris, a secret telepath himself, is that he discovers that most of them are insane. But one day in his mental wanderings he encounters a woman, living hundreds of miles away...and she is very, very sane. The two, both married, begin to develop a telepathic romantic affair...eventually Chris insists on a personal meeting. They go back and forth about the guilt of seeing one another...how it resolves itself is up to you, the reader, to find out. Of course, things like telepathy, time travel, and faster than light speed travel are staples of so-called "science" fiction...but I think this story of Silverberg does lend itself to non-telepathic analogies...
Next week: more from Dozois' anthology....
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