Weekly Short Stories: 1985 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I begin looking at science fiction short stories from the year 1985, as featured in the anthology The 1986 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and featuring his picks from the previous year.  In 1985 I was still living in the southwest part of Gainesville, living frugally as a cook working in a nearby Chinese restaurant and studying foreign languages as a hobby.  I would experience a hurricane scare in August (Elena) and in December observe Halley's Comet (with binoculars, standing in the field that would later be the site of Wal-Mart and now Cheesecake Factory/Whole Foods) and then meet my beautiful future wife Melissa...who had been living in my own apartment complex across from me for months.  But enough of my autobiography...here are my reviews of the first stories in Wollheim's book...

EARTHGATE by J. Brian Clarke

This is one of those classic "old school" sci-fi tales that came out from the 1940s through 60s, with a sense of human progress and optimism for the future.  It is discovered that on a distant world called Sounder exists platforms...portals if you will...for instantaneous entry into other distant worlds, placed there who knows how long before by an advanced civilization. but Earth...and the only other known intelligent life, the Phuili...are not accorded their own Gates.  But two Gates on Sounder don't seem to go anywhere, and a specialist is dispatched there to investigate whether one goes to Earth.  I liked the story's premise as well as the background intrigue of someone trying to sabotage everything...

ON THE DREAM CHANNEL PANEL by Ian Watson

Thirteen random people in a small radius of a community have discovered that their dreams are being interrupted by bizarre commercials of completely exotic but mouthwatering foods.  A high school teacher decides to get everyone together to investigate and solve this mystery.  The results are hilarious, and the teacher's fate leads to an even more hilarious ending to this imaginative tale...

THE GODS OF MARS by Gardner Dozois, Jack Dann and Michael Swanwick

When I read a relatively brief tale this tight and focused...and then see that three authors collaborated on it, I wonder exactly where each of them made their contributions.  Regardless of the authorship, though, this story was thoroughly brilliant in speculating about the strange observations of Martian canals from telescopic examinations by nineteenth centuries astronomers Percival Lowell and Giovanni Schiaparelli...and why they all seemed to disappear in subsequent observations by others.  What an ending, it freaked me out...

THE JAGUAR HUNTER by Lucius Shepard

Reading more like a Twilight Zone or Night Gallery episode than standard science fiction, a native of a poor Caribbean Island has agreed to hunt down a ferocious jaguar that has killed a few people there...and it has to do with plans to develop the area as a tourist magnet.  What is this jaguar really, and is there something a bit supernatural about it all?  This story, as with the two others I've read from Shepard, is really detailed about describing what life is like in this part of the world...from the viewpoints of the people actually living there...

SAILING TO BYZANTIUM by Robert Silverberg

Back in my May 4th article about 1984 science fiction short stories I discussed the Ian Watson tale We Remember Babylon, which appeared in Donald A. Wollheim's year's best anthology. The same editor the following year picked this suspiciously similarly based novella by Robert Silverberg.  Suspicious because both stories are based on the idea of a future society recreating ancient locales for study and/or entertainment.  In Silverberg's version it's way, way off into the future as humans have settled on other worlds while depopulating Earth to the point where the few remaining are served by myriad robots that do the construction and maintenance of five special "old" cultures worldwide.  A man from our present time finds himself suddenly in the midst of these future people as he tries to find his bearings while falling in love with a woman who, unlike the others of this era, seems to be slowly aging. Of Watson and Silverberg's stories the latter is clearly the better, as there are some intriguing ideas brought out in the conclusion that lean toward speculation about the true nature of personal identity, immortality and what it entails to possess essence...

Next week I continue my look at 1985 science fiction with more stories from Wollheim's anthology...