Here are some more of my reactions from science fiction short stories appearing in Gardner Dozois' anthology series The Year's, Best Science Fiction, Tenth Annual Collection. 1992 was the year of the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles and the subsequent riots that rocked that city. It was also a year of economic turndown that doomed the Bush administration in his reelection bid that November...he had enjoyed extremely high approval ratings just the year before immediately after the Persian Gulf War that drove Saddam Hussein's Iraq out of Kuwait. But let's get back to those stories...
A LONG NIGHT'S VIGIL AT THE TEMPLE by Robert Silverberg
In a far-off future, humanity worships the memory of three alien beings who visited many thousands of years earlier and who promised a glorious return. The Warder Diriente, chief officer of the main temple that worships them, is bound to ritual...as well as a growing belief he has kept secret, that his faith's theology doesn't quite ring true. But the temple's caretaker Mericalus has no such qualms about speaking his mind, and disturbs the Warder, one day suddenly appearing for him to follow...and shows something that turns it all upside down. But it's the Warder's reaction to this that was the story's profound message: isn't that what all religions do when confronted with contrary facts...
THE HAMMER OF GOD by Arthur C. Clarke
In a future distant enough for humanity to have ventured out into far deep space, a ship "out there" is given a grave task: deflect a sizeable asteroid determined to have a 99.9% chance of hitting Earth and destroying all life there. But what happens when they hit a snag in their mission? Hope all seems lost, unless... Clarke gives a grim science physics lesson on the effects of drag force at the end...
GROWNUPS by Ian R. MacLeod
This story reads like a fanciful Ray Bradbury coming of age story in what seems like good old apple pie Middle America...until the presence of "uncles" is revealed as an apparently third gender. As young Bobby goes through adolescence and approaches the time when he, like his friends, will "grow up", he is apprehensive about the pain he will endure during those few days. His friend Kay is skeptical about everything and doesn't want to leave childhood, and she is very suspicious of the bitter-tasting milk that all the children have to take. And what about the uncles, they seem to be manipulating the whole situation...the ending is an eye-opener. Good, suspenseful tale that makes one think about their roles gender-wise...
GRAVES by Joe Haldeman
In the Vietnam War, there is one detail duty no one wants...that is, unless they want to remain alive...and it's Graves Registration, where they find the killed soldiers' bodies and effects, bag them and ship them off for processing: pretty gruesome if that's all you see of the war. One day two soldiers on that assignment come across a very peculiar corpse, looking like no soldier but rather more like an elderly man deceased of natural causes. Suddenly gunfire erupts and their commanding officer is brutally killed while in mid-sentence. What happens at the end when the two finally are able to escape the battle scene and later come back is hair-raising...a speculation into possibilities of the biological strategy of mimicry...
The next two Wednesdays I will be on vacation and plan on a brief break from this blog during that time. I should be back reviewing sci-fi short stories from 1992 next month...
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