Today I'm starting on a new book in Gardner Dozois' anthology series The Year's Best Science Fiction, this one subtitled Ninth Annual Collection and covering the editor's picks from the year 1991. I remember 1991 for a number of things...it certainly was a big year internationally, with the Persian Gulf War's Operation Desert Storm taking place as General Norman Schwartzkopf's Allied troops...primarily of American soldiers...drove Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein from Kuwait and then deeply into his own country before the invasion stopped. But back to that year's sci-fi short fiction...
BEGGARS IN SPAIN by Nancy Kress
Scientists in the near future have discovered how to genetically manipulate children to be born without the need to ever sleep, and a small number of them are born in the USA and world at large. How society reacts to them reflects the common roots of prejudice, built upon fear and envy of what is perceived to be others' unfair advantages in life. Although the analogies from this important story could apply to different areas in today's world, I couldn't help but see the similarities to how Jewish people have been mistreated by different societies over the centuries...
LIVING WILL by Alexander Jablokov
A wealthy, aging man has programmed his computer to a high AI level, to the point where he can converse with it as it becomes more similar to his own personality...remember that this came out 32 years ago! He is noticing that his mental faculties are quickly declining and soon Alzheimer's is diagnosed. Now what does his computer have to do with his new strategy? Disturbing and intriguing...
A JUST AND LASTING PEACE by Lois Tilton
Here is an alternative history tale about the aftermath of the American Civil War. In this world the defeated South is subjected to long-term military occupation and oppressive rule, with the "rebels"...now generations distant from the original conflict...suffering degrading persecution and discrimination from the North, with the white population kept at a bare subsistence level. It's basically Jim Crow flipped over, and the narrator, a white southern boy, describes the growing armed resistance movement. In "our" real world, the Union victors were very mild with their Reconstruction by world historical standards...look at what would go down in former Yugoslavia among the Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and Kosovans in the ensuing 1990's after their previous centuries of conflict among themselves...
Next week I continue reviewing science fiction short stories from 1991...
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