Here's my second week of looking through the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection, presenting the editor's picks of the best short sci-fi to come out in the year 1999. When 1999 began, the country was in the throes of a presidential impeachment as the Republican Party decided to score political points against the current Democratic president, Bill Clinton, after he was discovered to be lying about a consensual affair while in office. In light of the current occupant of the White House and his own much more serious shenanigans, it's amazing how the level of partisan political divide in this country, as well as the standards of behavior expected of our leaders, has deteriorated. But I'm reviewing stories, right? Here's what I thought about the next two appearing in the book...
1016 TO 1 by James Patrick Kelly
Read "10 to the 16th to 1", this story has a distinct Stephen King feel to it...awesome! It's October 1962 and a boy has to come to grips way too early in his life with the politics of impending nuclear Armageddon after he encounters a strange man named "Counts", who seems to know all about the future. What does this individual want, and which direction will history go if he fulfills his new-found "friend's" modest request regarding then-President Kennedy's handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis? The story's ending should be sobering for all of us here in 2025...
WINEMASTER by Robert Reed
Many years ago the 1960's hit science fiction series The Outer Limits has an episode starring Robert Culp titled Demon with a Glass Hand. The premise with Reed's tale here is similar, as in a rather dystopian future a whole segment of humanity has been miniaturized...and the authorities, after criminalizing their existence, are out to get them. One individual, named Winemaster, is trying to protect them from the pursuing agent Blaine...it becomes a suspenseful battle of wits...
Next week: more from "party like it's" 1999...
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