Here are some more reviews of sci-fi short stories from the Gardner Dozois-edited anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Third Annual Collection, featuring tales first published elsewhere in 1985. Let's go straight to those stories...
FLYING SAUCER ROCK & ROLL by Howard Waldrop
A nostalgic science fiction story...if you think urban gangs of doo-wop singers to be nostalgic. It's the fall of 1965 and two rival New York gangs...each with their own doo-wop singing group...vie in a "loser drinks the winners' pee" contest for best performance. Along with them disrespecting the Beatles and other British acts I liked, I have to say I didn't dig the nostalgia...whenever these old doo-wop songs came on the radio, I would switch the station, yuck. What does this have to do with sci-fi? Well, there's this flying saucer that swoops down just as the final act is going on...and then there's that famous blackout...
A SPANISH LESSON by Lucius Shepard
This is a really scary science fiction story...take that genre and fill it with imagery from one of H.P. Lovecraft's amazing short stories and we're talking nightmare territory. It all starts out innocently enough, on a Spanish coast where obnoxious expatriates from various countries hang out acting cool. But there are new neighbors, a strange-looking couple, ostensibly brother and sister, who are starting to creep out the others. But they don't know the half of the story. This would be a great movie adaptation...
ROADSIDE RESCUE by Pat Cadigan
In a near future when aliens have assimilated on Earth to the point where they've become rich, a human motorist's car breaks down in the desert. Before his called-in help arrives, a limousine pulls up to him and the chauffer offers to help. But there's a price. You see, there's one of those aliens in the back seat and all the motorist has to do is talk to it continuously for a few minutes. The anger and frustration build up...and well as the laughs for the reader in this humorous tale...
PAPER DRAGONS by James P. Blaylock
"Mechano-vivisection" and "mutability of matter" are concepts allowing for the mechanical construction of living things in this quirky story of a future in which there seems to be alternative realities fogging around. It takes place on the northwest American coast as a dragon is being constructed from mechanical parts...but the tinkerer creating it needs help from an elusive craftsman. Much about this story I didn't get, but I just saw on the news that a Google engineer was just fired for claiming that AI has reached a state of sentience, so maybe we're not that far off from this sort of thing. Just watch out for Arnold Schwarzenegger on a motorcycle...
Next week I conclude my look at science fiction short stores from 1985...
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