Weekly Short Stories: 1989 Science Fiction, Part 3

Here are my reviews of the final four science fiction short stories from 1989 as they appeared in Donald A. Wollheim's The 1990 Annual World's Best SF, featuring his selections from the previous year.  Wollheim would die later in 1990, so this concludes his excellent anthology series.  Henceforth I will be only using another worthy annual science fiction anthology series, The Year's Best Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois and going all the way through the year 2018: plenty more to come!  But for now, let's look at those final four tales in Wollheim's book...

NOT WITHOUT HONOR by Judith Moffett

This is a nostalgia-soaked story focusing on the old fifties Mickey Mouse Club television series, especially Jimmie Dodd as its mature, mentoring figure.  Set in the future, a biome scientist on Mars meets with alien travelers who picked up the old series' signals over the light years of space and are here to meet Mr. Dodd, their idea of honor and goodness.  Only how to break it to them: Dodd is dead and so is a lot of what he exemplified...

DOGWALKER by Orson Scott Card

Hi-tech medical implants combine with street-wise criminals working for organized crime in this scary tale of a "vertical" young man whose brain was altered after being nearly fatally shot...to some he is dead anyway. Although the criminals here are ruthless, the scariest part is the notion that drastically altering the human brain and essence through medical procedures in order to achieved specialization isn't that far beyond our present capabilities...

SURRENDER by Lucius Shepard

In one of the most vicious polemics I've read against war, especially of the proxy sort staged in poor third world countries, a genetically modified food has caused severe mutations over generations of a native population in Central America...they are now the immediate enemy for an American correspondent and his colleagues.  But he knows the real enemy behind it all and doesn't hold back on his wrath...

WAR FEVER by J.G. Ballard

As in the previous story, the ongoing enemy in the intense narrative isn't the ultimate one. Here it's perpetual urban war in Beirut with no end in sight...but what about those UN peacekeepers...

Next week: more sci-fi stories reviewed from 1989, using the Dozois anthology...