Here's another installment in my weekly review of short stories as I read them. The year I'm currently covering is 1998, and the anthology I'm reading is The Year's Best Science Fiction, Sixteenth Annual Collection, and featuring short stories and novellas from 1998 that series editor Gardner Dozois, also a sci-fi writer in his own right, selected. I got through two tales this week, so here are my reactions...
TAKLAMAKAN by Bruce Sterling
Taklamakan is a desert area located in central Asia, specifically in Xinjiang, China. It's the setting for a "black ops" spy operation in the future as a pair of operatives...one a humanoid alien...infiltrate a heavily-defended (by myriad robots) complex in that desert. Sterling's stories often reflect a cynical view of the "world order" with multinationals and militaristic countries vying for power. It's the same here...what they find once inside reminded me a little of the premise behind the Matrix movie series. And the author's depiction of the robots and their "ecosystem" is nothing short of staggering...
THE ISLAND OF THE IMMORTALS Ursula k. Le Guin
I looked it up: the archipelago and specific island in this story are apparently fictional...maybe that's for the better as the protagonist is on a quest to discover the rumored immortal people dwelling on that island. Yet while everyone there seems to confirm this, their utter lack of enthusiasm about the notion of people living forever is quite a shock. That is, until he discovers what is behind their immortality...and where their "eternal life" eventually lands them: quite a surprise ending. A sobering tale by a legendary author in the genre...
Next week: more about science fiction from 1998...
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