Below are my reactions to three more short stories as they appeared in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Eleventh Annual Collection, covering material published in 1993. That year...going back to me first starting to work at the Gainesville post office and afterward through most of 1995...I often rode my ramshackle bicycle the nearly eight miles from my home to my graveyard shift at work and back, usually on the way there stopping off for a book & coffee break at the Books-a-Million (now 2nd and Charles) on NW 13th Street and then cutting across the University of Florida campus before hitting Archer Road...good times, good times. I'm also having a good time reading this book edited by Dozois...
GEORGIA ON MY MIND by Charles Sheffield
Sheffield was a theoretical physicist who worked with the U.S. space program...he injects much of his science and engineering knowledge into his stories. Here he presents a primer on the early history of computers as an anomalous discover has been made in a remote New Zealand country house that puts into question not only what we believed about our past, but also the notion that humans are the only indigenous life forms on Earth at our level of intelligence and technology. Very intriguing...
CUSH by Neal Barrett, Jr.
A poor rural black woman's niece has a little boy, Cush, who seems to supernaturally bless everyone he encounters while drawing illness, injury and deformity upon his own body. When word of his gift leaks out, Andrea must encounter and confront the outsiders invading their personal lives at their suddenly prospering Alabama farm. Taking on the world's pain and suffering to make it undeservingly better is a common theme in religion, especially Christianity. This tale seems to be a kind of analogy...
ON THE COLLECTION OF HUMANS by Mark Rich
Sometimes a story can be so short, like this one, that it lacks an integral structure. This is more or less a manual for advanced alien scientists on how to abduct humans for research purposes. Obviously meant to be funny, I gave it a couple of chuckles and then moved on, in doing so casting a suspicious look at the sky behind me...
Next week I will continue my look at 1993 as I go through some more of Garder Dozois' selections from that year in science fiction...
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