It's Wednesday, so here I am again, slowly going through yet another Gardner Dozois anthology, his ninth annual collection of his series titled The Year's Best Science Fiction and focusing on stories published in the year 1991. These books of his are very, very huge...not like the previous two different series I reviewed, edited respectively by Isaac Asimov and Donald A. Wollheim. Yet I do appreciate the stories, by and large, that Dozois selected: today's three subjects are no exceptions. If you're wondering when I get around to reading these tales for my weekly articles, the answer is simple: on my breaks at work! And now, without further ado, here are my reactions to these tales as they appeared in the book...
A HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, WITH ILLUSTRATIONS by Kim Stanley Robinson
A writer is commissioned to write a history book about the twentieth century...but at every turn he is confronted with its horrible wars and bloodshed. Finally, he drives to a far, distant place in the north to get away from it all and repeats for the next century the rosy, optimistic scenario that another writer a hundred years before had predicted for the twentieth. After all, as bad as it was, you have to look ahead with hope...
GENE WARS by Paul J. McAuley
A short, frenetically paced story about a young gene design entrepreneur written at the time when the whole controversy about owning trademarks to aspects of biology was just getting started. McAuley brutally takes this emerging industry and trends to their logical...and very extreme and disturbing...conclusion...
THE GALLERY OF HIS DREAMS by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
This is a very tender, sensitive story of the great American Civil War photographer Mathew Brady and an examination both of the fickle nature of public fame and the horrors of war. I'm guessing that the author drew on a lot of truth about Brady's life and his beloved wife Julia...and then turned it into a science fiction time travel yarn that somehow worked well. Highly recommended...
Next week: still more from the year 1991 in short science fiction...
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