Here are four more selections of 1989 science fiction short stories I'm reviewing from the late Gardner Dozois' anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventh Annual Collection. Let's see, back at that time I was working at the Gainesville Post Office Downtown Station mail processing facility, on the graveyard shift keying letters on the letter sorting machine (LSM) and then later switching over to the newly installed flat sorting machine (FSM) for magazines and mail of that size. While doing this I would listen to music on my Sony Walkman. My "Song of the Year"? Handle With Care by the star-studded supergroup Traveling Wilburys, with Sowing the Seeds of Love by Tears for Fears a close second. But back to those stories...
LOTTERY NIGHT by S.P. Somtow
In Thailand a family feels it needs to win the local lottery to keep their financial heads above water. The son teams up with a friend to visit a nearby graveyard where his great aunt's ghost just might cough up the winning number for him. Full of Thai culture, ancestor worship, Buddhism and superstitions...maybe not so much science fiction, although entertaining...
A DEEPER SEA by Alexander Jablokov
In a future Earth, whales and dolphins have achieved civil rights with the human community, even to the point of becoming space explorers, their bodies modified and shielded as they become essentially cyborgs in space and on environmentally hostile worlds. A Russian scientist familiar with them has to make grave decisions of conscience as he confronts his past abuse of these highly intelligent mammals during wartime...
THE EDGE OF THE WORLD by Michael Swanwick
On an alternative Earth, the world abruptly ends somewhere in the Middle East. Three American teens whose parents are stationed there during tense times decide to go down the often-treacherous steps over the steep cliff and edge. In the process they reveal their true selves to one another...quite a chilling ending that reminded me of the Twilight Zone episode And When the Sky Was Opened...
SILVER LADY AND THE FORTYISH MAN by Megan Lindholm
In today's time a young woman, a would-be professional writer, tries against hope to keep up with her bills while working underpaid in a big city department store. One evening an ordinary-looking "fortyish" man enters and ultimately reveals himself to be Merlin. This is a very funny story, full of odd, awkward predicaments, and should capture the hearts of anyone who has a writer's block and is struggling to make it in the literary world...
Next week I conclude my look at 1989 science fiction short stories...
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