Here is another round of reviews of 1992 sci-fi tales appearing in the Gardner Dozois-edited anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Tenth Annual Collection. At that time...and for years before and after...I mentioned before that I worked essentially an early morning graveyard shift at the post office processing plant here in Gainesville. Also, during this time I often rode my bicycle the nearly eight miles to work and back, something that I would never do these days...not because of the physical demands but rather because I've grown to distrust other drivers with their myriad sources of distractions when they're supposed to be focused on the road (and my very vulnerable presence on the side). But back to those stories...
THE ELVIS NATIONAL THEATER OF OKINAWA by Jonathan Lethem and Lukas Jaeger
A futuristic story, as are so many in this genre, it's also brief, but to the point. It distills what we see in our current popular media culture of celebrities into the absurdity of elevating shock over artistic substance. A musical band seeking recognition thinks its big moment has arrived, only to find itself shunted aside by an influential agent who only sees a future in one of its quirky members.
THE TERRITORY by Bradley Denton
This is an alternative history story about the passage through the American Civil War of perhaps our best-known writer, Samuel Clemons...who later wrote under the pseudonym Mark Twain. There is a crucial moment when "our" history changes and it involves the fate of Clemens' brother Orion as they face the marauding Kansas Redlegs. The story to me was true to Sam Clemens' incredible sardonic wit and theorized that sometimes alternate scenarios can return to their original paths, more or less. I enjoyed it...
THE BEST AND REST OF JAMES JOYCE by Ian MacLeod
Four years ago, I read Irish writer James Joyce's chief defining work, Ulysses...click on the title to read my reactions. Subsequently I picked up a copy of his later piece Finnegans Wake and was instantly befuddled. Joyce likes to present "stream of consciousness" narratives, if you can call them narratives, and this can be difficult for the reader who is trying to discern what is real and what is imagined. This story by MacLeod puts Joyce the artist in an array of alternative history universes...with time travel thrown in for good measure just to complicate things further. In one passage the United Kingdom isn't in northern Europe but just off the coast of Africa, in another it's been at war against Tsarist Russia for more than a century. Joyce for his part slips in and out of different roles, one as a physicist on a dirigible and another as a popular poetic recording artist fusing the hip Moroccan music scene with Irish traditions...it's all a little too much to take. My suggestion: read this story like you would one of James Joyce's novels and just try to flow with it all...it may be all you can do with it...
Next week I conclude my look at the year 1992 in short science fiction...
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