Here are my reactions to four more tales from 1990, presented in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Eighth Annual Collection and edited by the late Gardner Dozois. In the summer of that year, Gainesville and the University of Florida in particular were excited about the arrival of Steve Spurrier as their new head football coach...and then tragedy struck with the five murders of young people in their apartments...panic struck the city and area until the culprit was caught...a loser ex-con from Louisiana...but not before the police chief had practically convicted in the media a different, completely innocent and mentally ill young man: shame, shame, shame. And now, about those four stories...
THE CAIRENE PURSE by Michael Moorcock
An interesting mood piece set in the Aswan High Dam region of Egypt in the near future as the dam's negative effect on the environment is evident and an Englishman searches the area for his missing archaeologist sister, who he discovers has picked up a reputation as a healer, a dabbler in witchcraft...and what is it about that strange spacecraft?
THE COON ROLLED DOWN AND RUPTURED HIS LARINKS, A SQUEEZED NOVEL BY MR. SKUNK by Dafydd ab Hugh
A plague of sorts in the future has leveled the intelligence of infected animal life and humans, lowering that of the latter while increasing the former's to the point where dogs, cats, skunks and other critters can freely converse and hang out...when they're not eating one another, that is. A group, let by the skunk narrator, is on a mission to "liberate" the remaining "normal" humans hidden by an insulated dome protecting them from the virus. I liked how the story was presented from the skunk's viewpoint...ha-ha...
TOWER OF BABYLON by Ted Chiang
The Biblical tower of babel from Genesis is the model for this tale of humanity painstakingly...for generations...building a tower tall enough to literally pass the sun, stars, reaching the dome of the sky that borders heaven. Told in a narrative that conforms to ancient beliefs about the state of the universe, I enjoyed the story's ending...I wonder if Stephen King picked up on it for his Dark Tower series (read the final book)...
THE DEATH ARTIST by Alexander Jablokov
It's hard to find a likeable character in this future world of people that keep their real physical bodies protected while able to project their essence into clones that they use for diversion and adventure, with dying in them no cause for alarm as they always wake up in their original form. Death for oneself...and others as well, becomes a numbing, repeated experience in this decadent world...
Next week: more about short science fiction from 1990...
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