I admit it: reading...and even writing as well...hasn't been very fun for me lately, with the recently transpired events in my life. Yet I still plod along, reading and writing less but still coming out with blog articles, albeit not daily (at least for this season). I'm continuing with the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fifteenth Annual Collection, and have the next two stories in it, from the year 1997, to discuss...
YEYUKA by Greg Egan
This is a biting commentary on the disparity between the elite level in medical technology for some and the scarcity of anything effective in the Third World. A physician wears a ring that diagnoses and treats just about anything medical that could go wrong in his body, but his technology isn't available to those living in Uganda, the site of a major outbreak of the fatal disease Yeyuka. Yet some there are feverishly working hard to come up with bootleg versions based on spare parts they can muster. up Out protagonist doctor discovers this on a volunteer mission to treat the epidemic and has a major ethical decision to make...
FROST PAINTING by Carolyn Ives Gilman
A professional critic searches the Montana wilderness to find her artist live-in lover, who left her to join a weird commune that supposedly is in deep communication to an alien race residing there. Is art for its own sake worth basing one's life on, or is tailoring one's talents to others' preferences a sellout.? This, along with a pretty disparaging view of heterosexual men by the lesbian protagonist, dominate this brief tale...
More next week from the Dozois anthology...
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