Weekly Short Stories: 1993 Science Fiction, Part 3

Here are some more reviews of 1993 short stories (with a novella thrown in) from Gardner Dozois' anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Eleventh Annual Collection.  That year I was working at the post office, keying and sorting mail on their flat-sorting machine during the graveyard shift, "Tour One" in their lingo.  Actually, I kept those working hours from 1987 to 1995, 1998-2003 and 2013-2016...don't know how I did it.  But enough about me, how about those stories...

FRIENDSHIP BRIDGE by Brian W. Aldiss

In a not-so-distant future, there is a criminal trade in people's memories, snatched from them surreptitiously under false premises.  An architectural history scholar believes a key element of his own was taken from him.  He is traveling to Turkmenistan to reclaim it from that nation's president.  The story's title refers to an abandoned bridge project meant to connect that country, recently liberated following the Soviet Union's breakup in 1991, to Iran.  I remember reading about the theme of snatched memories from an earlier story, but I can't remember which one: hmmm...

INTO THE MIRANDA RIFT by G. David Nordley

In this novella loaded with hard science details about physics, chemistry and biology in the setting of Miranda, one of Uranus' moons, a party of four is investigating the chasms under its surface.  They were caused by, first, the moon's destruction following a catastrophic collision millions of years earlier and then, the matter recoalescing, imperfectly, over a vast span of time afterward.  The four get trapped underground, and the race against time is on to get back to the surface.  In the process they discover each other and much about themselves.  The science part of the story was hard to muddle through, but it did fit the narrative well and made it more than just a flight of fantasy...

MWALIMU IN THE SQUARED CIRCLE by Mike Resnick

I remember back in 1978-79 how Tanzania's president Julius Nyerere had finally had enough of neighboring Uganda's bloodthirsty dictator Idi Amin and invaded, toppling him from power (with most of the world rejoicing). Apparently, at the time Amin had challenged Nyere to a winner-take-all boxing match to decide the war and was obviously refused, the massive tyrant's history of being a boxer contrasting sharply with Nyerere's diminutive, unathletic physique. This story pretends that Nyere accepted Amin's challenge.  The two are in the ring, with none other than Muhammad Ali as referee...

Next week: more SF from '93...