Today I discuss two well-written stories from 1999 that appear in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection. I always like to see Robert Silverberg's presence in these anthologies, and Paul J. McAuley likewise contributed a thought-provoking entry. Here's my take on them...
A HERO OF THE EMPIRE by Robert Silverberg
Close to novella-length, this is an alternative history tale that speculates on how history may have progressed had the Western Roman Empire remained as a powerful entity into the seventh-century, AD. A member of the Emperor Justinian's court has been sent, ostensibly in disgrace but in reality to be a spy, to the stark desert land of Arabia where he not only befriends the Eastern Empire's representative there, but also meets up with a local charismatic fanatic who simultaneously enthralls and scares him with his convictions. I wonder, given the violent touchiness certain world religions have toward those who they feel are taking liberties with their ideology, if Silverberg's 1999 story might have had a different fate were it submitted for publishing following 9/11 only a couple of years later. Not that it contains anything offensive, but that ending might have been just a bit too unsettling to an intolerantly true believer...
HOW WE LOST THE MOON, A TRUE STORY BY FRANK W. ALLEN by Paul J. McAuley
Here's a truly "hard" science fiction story, that is, one with scientific viability playing a key role in its plot and outcome. Here the reader gets a crash course...without the advanced mathematics...on black holes and the degree of threat that they might pose if close to Earth. "Frank W. Allen" in the title is apparently the first-person fictional character relating the events that, in a near-future scenario, indeed determine the fate of our moon. Along with his physicist colleague, working on the moon to fix problems at various research sites, the two arrive at a somber conclusion after an accident at a base on the Far Side. You might gather from this that Earth and its life would be in peril...yet astonishingly, this doesn't seem to be the case. An intriguing story that makes me wonder whether something like this could actually occur...
Next week I continue looking at the year 1999 in short science fiction...
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