Here, finally, is the final installment of my reviews of science fiction stories from the year 1996, focusing on a nice, long novella, the kind of tale that anthology editor Gardner Dozois had no problem including in his series The Year's Best Science Fiction (this volume being Fourteenth Annual Collection) in spite of its length. Dozois, sadly, passed away six years ago...he was also a science fiction writer. But about that story...
THE ROBOT'S TWILIGHT COMPANION by Tony Daniel
In the Pacific Northwest...more specifically the area in Washington state around Mount St. Helen...a geologist uses a robot/machine/digger to excavate the ground as he plies his academic field of exploration. The geologist passes away in an accident, and the robot basically carries the narrative as it incorporates his memories and witnesses the passage of history in the area, including the rise of a violent cult/secessionist movement. The geologist's children return to continue the work. And there's something mysterious and apparently sentient at the bottom of the dig they're working on. The author brought into this story a lot of stuff, and I liked the approach of seeing things from the robot's point of view. But what impressed me the most was how he exposed what I often see in daily life: the often corrupt and malevolent nature of human organizations that preach how benevolent and necessary they are for the good of society and the world, and how they tend to demonize their opponents in the most vicious ways possible while tolerating no dissent from those within their own ranks. Also, we see here from this 1996 story what I'm sadly beginning to see now in 2024: the social disintegration of America into sometimes-armed camps of people stuck on their ideologies, truth be damned, and hatred of one another: in our world it's called "doubling down"...
Well, that's it for 1996 in the world of short science fiction, although there's plenty more out there if you're interested in that particular year. My next installment of this blog feature will jump ahead to the year 1997, continuing to use as a framework the Dozois anthology series...
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