Weekly Shortly Stories: 1989 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I begin reviewing science fiction short stories from the year 1989 as they appeared in the annual anthology The 1990 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and representing his picks from the previous year.  It would be Wollheim's final anthology as he sadly passed away at the end of 1990.  For the years 1983-88 I have been reviewing stories from both Wollheim's "year's best" anthologies and those of Gardner Dozois...after I finish with this book that I'm currently on, it'll just be Gardner for the ensuing years, at least through 2018 if I get that far.  But for now, how about those first four tales in Wollheim's book...

ALPHAS by Gregory Benford

Set in the not-so-distant future, first contact is made with aliens whose flippant attitudes about terrestrial humans reminded me of the Vogons in Douglas Adams' hilarious Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...at least these dudes aren't building an intergalactic highway through our solar system!  No, instead they've set their sights on our neighboring world Venus and seem to be drastically changing it to be able to host their own kind of life.  Being territorial as we tend to be, a miffed humanity sends a ship to check them out...one of the crew becomes an unwitting hero in what must be the ultimate ride for anyone to experience...

THE MAGIC BULLET by Brian Stableford

This is a short sci-fi mystery tale, where a scientist experimenting with mice and viruses is attacked and his lab burned down.  A former friend is the sleuth here...she learns of a special "magic bullet" virus that eventually inserts itself into the host's genome, with drastic consequences for humanity. Great story...

NORTH OF THE ABYSS by Brian W. Aldiss

I look at the lives of the protagonist, a successful businessman, and his wife, and wonder why they're both so miserable...I guess happiness does come from within.  Oscar North, totally discontent with his life, finds a source of enlightenment when they visit Egypt and he learns of that land's ancient religion centered around Isis, Osiris, and other gods.  A story that leaves you wondering what is real, what isn't, and how much of our "reality" is captive to our own beliefs...

CHIPRUNNER by Robert Silverberg

A brilliant young man is wasting away in anorexia while his therapist struggles to understand his motives, which seem to revolve around making himself small enough to be among the very atoms themselves. Complicating it all is that the therapist himself is starting to dream of the same things. I understood the story without getting the premise...

Next week: more of Donald A. Wollheim's sci-fi short story picks from 1989...