I'm still plodding through the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection, which presents his picks of the best stories from the year 1999. Today I'll discuss the next two in the book...
SUICIDE COAST by M. John Harrison
The author examines two converging trends in society: the compulsion of many to engage in daredevil activities, with the rush provided by the experience feeding into an ever-intensifying addiction, and the emergence of virtual reality and gaming, on a scale here so realistic that the story's final paragraphs turn that reality completely upside down. A little hard to follow, this tale, but that ending was impressive...
HUNTING MOTHER by Sage Walker
As in the previous story, the author here combines two different ideas. One is how people would survive...without declining...on board a multi-generational spaceship travelling to the stars for eventual settlement. The other is the notion of genetically modifying humans by grafting onto their genes the genetic material of certain animals. I found this tale a little depressing and too "far out" in more than one way as a dying mother, one of those genetic scientists on board this vast ship, has to deal with her own son, modified with predatory instincts (and claws) of a cougar...
Next week: more SF from '99...
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