Weekly Short Stories: 1998 Science Fiction, Part 2

Here's another Wednesday, time to continue with my ongoing reactions to short stories I've just read, my current project being the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Sixteenth Annual Collection, and featuring the editor's selections from this book of 1998 tales.  Looking back on that year, I remember really liking certain songs I heard off the radio: Fly Away by Lenny Kravitz (my "song of the year"), Building a Mystery by Sarah McLachlan, The Way by Fastball, Ray of Light by Madonna...and Intergalactic Planetary by the Beastie Boys immediately come to mind.  It was a good year musically...but back to those stories...

APPROACHING PERIMELASMA by Geoffrey A. Landis

This is a remarkable, science-packed speculation into what it might be like to go through a black hole, along with the necessary drastic preparations that include uploading the observer into a heavily-fortified 1 mm tall body.  If you're a Stephen Hawking fan, this description of the event horizon and the various characteristics of black holes should be a treat.  The only drawback I see in the story is the notion that personal identities can be transferred...and extinguished...this casually...

CRAPHOUND by Cory Doctorow

While the previous tale delved into black holes, this one is a treatise on the art of discerning hidden treasures found in yard and junk sales.  The aliens have landed, and they seem to be unusually interested in memorabilia...the tackier the better, trading valuable high-tech secrets for what seems to be essentially worthless "crap".  The narrator befriends one of these traders and resents the extraterrestrial for outbidding him on a highly-sought item.  A very funny, tongue-in-cheek tale that seeks to present a possible positive outcome of first contact...

JEDELLA GHOST by Tanith Lee

A young man, a writer, encounters what appears to be a young woman...around eighteen...who had wandered into town from the woods.  She says she is sixty-five, though, and does not understand what death or sickness is when she witnesses it.  The man eventually goes on a quest into the woods to discover the mystery of her origins.  This is a mood piece that might have fit in well with the old sixties television series Night Gallery, and was a refreshing departure from the usual type of sci-fi short stories I have been reading.  Actually, I see this tale as being more in line with the more psychologically-intense fiction so ably produced by Stephen King...

Next week: more stuff from '98...