Today as I review more science fiction short stories from 1987, I switch over to the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fifth Annual Collection, featuring the editor's picks. In covering these stories as they appear in the book, I'm skipping over the ones I've already discussed that were in the other anthology presented by Donald A. Wollheim. Now, without further ado, here are my reactions to the first five stories appearing only in the Dozois anthology...
DREAM BABY by Bruce McAllister
A great story in its own right, there are still telling similarities in concept with the Twilight Zone episode The Purple Testament as well as the Stephen King novel Firestarter. A nurse serving in the Vietnam War dreams of the soldiers who will be flown in and die under her care. She encounters one, though, with a different paranormal ability...unwittingly attracting the attention of a government black-ops agent...
FLOWERS OF EDO by Bruce Sterling
Not exactly science fiction, but an enlightening revelation about what it must have been like in the years following the forced exposure to the West and its society and technology imposed upon imperial Japan following Matthew Perry's naval expedition in 1853. An embittered former samurai tries to relate to the new Japan as it adopts foreign Western concepts...funny in places but ultimately shown to be a horror tale...
AT THE CROSS-TIME JAUNTERS' BALL by Alexander Jablokov
Demigod-like humans have the ability to create new realities, entirely different worlds with notable similarities at times to one another. Some "ordinary" humans serve specialized functions for them, including the protagonist, whose job is to be critic to their "artistic" creations. But he finds that someone is trying to kill him as he journeys from world to world while trying to keep his marriage together. One of those stories that show that vanity and arrogance are universal with people, even those with extraordinary abilities and power...
THE TEMPORARY KING by Paul J. McAuley
On a future Earth when humanity has settled the cosmos, there are protected pockets of more traditional, pretechnological cultures...the Lemue family live in one not far from advanced, bustling San Francisco. But a strange man with high tech gizmos has suddenly appeared, and his presence has the locals practically deifying him. A teenage girl, one of the Lumues, sees a different side of him...
PERPETUITY BLUES by Neal Barrett, Jr.
The saga of little Maggie from her seventh birthday through her teens is revealed in this humorous tale of strange disappearances, a dubious crash-landed-but-kindly alien, abusive relatives, truckers, gangsters, and on it goes. Maggie deals with her situations and plights with blunt optimism...she's pretty cool! Very funny...and very Maggie...
Next week: more short sci-from '87...
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