Today I look at yet another "long" short story, a novella-length tale that editor Gardner Dozois seemed to love including in his anthologies, this volume covering 1995: The Year's Best Science Fiction, Thirteenth Annual Collection. 1995 was special to me in the world of passive spectator sports. The Florida Gators football team went undefeated in the regular season and won yet again the Southeastern Conference championship...only to get thoroughly crushed by Nebraska in the national championship game. And the Atlanta Braves, which I had been following since 1979, finally pulled off a World Series title, this one against the Cleveland Indians. But back to that story...
DEATH IN THE PROMISED LAND by Pat Cadigan
Virtual gaming, something that seems to be finally catching on, is taken to its logical extreme as a detective investigates the murder of a young man whose throat was physically...and virtually...slashed while playing an extremely popular and violent game. To solve the puzzle, she enters the game itself under his identity...and the fall down the rabbit hole begins. This story came out a year before Tad Williams' brilliant four-volume series Otherland began about the same subject. In both scenarios, players become addicted to the virtual environment, essentially abandoning the real world and placing their hopes and dreams on virtual success and adventure. In this sense it isn't that much different from what happens to humanity in the late Clifford Simak's wonderful novel City, written way back in the mid-twentieth century...
Next week, I'll see if I can't review more than one story...a little cooperation, please, Gardner!
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