I continue my look at the year 1989 in the world of short science fiction, examining Gardner Dozois' selections for his anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventh Annual Collection. In August of '89, Melissa and I would move from our south Gainesville apartment to our house in the northern fringe of the city...the next month we found out she was pregnant, and Will was born the following spring. Also, in December of 1989 we experienced snow for the last time in Gainesville...and it was quite a bit, following an early morning of freezing rain, treacherous roads and icicles hanging everywhere. Ah, memory lane...but how about those stories? Here are my reactions to the next ones in the book...
TALES FROM THE VENIA WOODS by Robert Silverberg
In an alternative history world in which the old Roman Empire endured over the millennia and finally reverts to a Republic, a teenage boy and his little sister discover the heir to the throne of the banned empire after wandering deep through the woods near what we would in ours call Vienna, Austria. This story is another venture in cognitive reverie with the author doing a lot of speculating on "what if", as these alternative history stories tend to do...yawn. Not one of my favorites from Silverberg, whose writing I generally like...
VISITING THE DEAD by William King
An intriguing look at a possible future when humans living through generations in outer space need artificial exoskeletons to support their fragile bodies when visiting Earth...and the native population there has become passive and complacent, addicted to simulations that duplicate the effects of reality. And there are the Greys, humans genetically modified to WANT to be servants and do menial work that the jaded rest of the population deems beneath themselves. Kinda scary, actually...but that part about "simulations" seems to be coming true in my own lifetime...
DORI BANGS by Bruce Sterling
This is a counterculture alternative history tale of a rock critic and his eventual love who bypass their respective premature deaths...and then just go on stumbling through life without seeming to have learned anything. I wasn't quite sure what the point of this story was: you live and then die OR you get to live some more and THEN you die...
THE ENDS OF THE EARTH by Lucius Shepard
A novelist, rebounding from a traumatic affair, becomes an expatriate American living with expatriates from other countries in a secluded Guatemala coastal town. His rival there is an Englishman who has been playing a mysterious and ominous board game that goes back to ancient Mayan times. There are a lot of dream interludes as the game takes over our protagonist's mind, and reality becomes blurred as to whether he is himself or the grotesque and violent character his game piece portrays. This novella goes deeply into people's outer masks and the hurts and drives hidden behind them...the ending was pretty interesting considering what all happened...or did it happen...as the story reached its climax. In this it reminded me a little of that 2000 Christian Bale movie American Psycho, truth be told. Shepard is an incredible writer...
THE PRICE OF ORANGES by Nancy Kress
An elderly man living in a big city has a secret he shares with his friend: his apartment contains a portal into the past, going back 52 years to the year 1937. Seeing no suitable prospects for his rebellious granddaughter to marry, he goes back then in search of potential husbands...with surprising results. I've always liked the notion of a secret time portal...it's one of the main reasons I liked Stephen King's novel 11/22/63 so much...
Next week: more 1989 stories reviewed from the Dozois anthology...
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