We've arrived at another Wednesday, and as such it is time for me to comment on the latest science fiction short stories I've read as I continue to go through the past, year-by-year, using as a story reference the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection, this volume featuring picks from 1999...
DAPPLE: A HWARHATH HISTORICAL ROMANCE by Eleanor Arsnason
On a distant world is a (furry) human society where the gender roles are inverted to a degree, and homosexual behavior is the accepted norm with heterosexual unions are highly ritualized and generally considered undesirable. In this setting a girl has her sights set on putting on plays for others, following in the tradition of visiting friends of her sea-faring family. Only problem: putting on traveling shows is considered "men's" work...she has some barriers to overcome, as well as a few life-threatening adventures, as this interesting narrative progresses. This story illustrates the often arbitrary way that societies (including ours) construct themselves with their traditions and taboos...
PEOPLE CAME FROM EARTH by Stephen Baxter
Here Baxter, a noted "hard" science fiction writer, lays out the parameters for a Moon colony of people, cut off from Earth after it foolishly destroys itself in high-tech warfare. Due to nano-weapons that destroyed the metal used in high technology, the remaining lunar population, their bodies thin, light and fragile and susceptible to wasting disease, no longer has the metals used in their previous higher state of technology, forced now to revert to more primitive agriculture and engineering. A lunar man's young nephew is enthralled with the papers and legacy of Leonardi da Vinci...their conversations, along the boy's rapidly deteriorating health and the colony's race against time to develop its technological base...form the basis for this sobering piece...
Next week: more from '99...
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