I’ve been working on this collection for a week and a half. I never seem to get through Dozois’ Year’s Best S.F. editions quickly. They are big. But I think the short story format means I keep getting jarred out of a reading rhythm as well. Just as I get going on one set of assumptions, or one mode, or whatever, the story ends, and I start out at zero with the next story.

Anyway, for today’s Sunday Salon, I finished up with the last couple of hundred pages worth of stories. Forgive me any etiquette faux pas by including my previous reading in today’s review.

On a personal note, I started wearing spectacles earlier this week. Thirty-seven years old and I apparently haven’t been able to read with my right eye for a couple of decades. Not that I really realized this as my left eye has nearly perfect vision and dominates. With glasses, the pages became so much clearer though. But oh is it a change! I am not liking the adjustment. I don’t know how you glasses-wearers do it!

On to the stories…

Tiny Tango, Judith Moffett

Imagining a future in which AIDS and HIV cause carriers to be reviled by the general population. Kind of like in 1989, when the story was published. The story follows a woman who is infected but keeps it secret, as she attempts to live a completely stress-free, ambition-free life in the hopes that it will extend her life. Of course, stress-free is difficult after a nuclear accident makes her home city of Philadelphia uninhabitable and an alien race (the Hefn) appear in the sky. Decent story.

Out of Copyright, Charles Sheffield

A fairly mundane story about multi-national corporations vying for a contract to crash asteroids onto Io. In order to do it better, they all clone famous scientists to run the projects. But clones don’t have memories of who they were. And sometimes they don’t even have the skills that the originals did. Nature vs. nurture and all. The hook for the title is that a scientist has a copyright on himself for 75 years after his death, and so he can’t be cloned until that expires.

For I Have Touched the Sky, Mike Resnick

A story set on Kirinyaga, where ethnic Kikuyu are attempting to create a society based on the old ways of the Kikuyu. One of those ways is that girls are not to learn how to read. And yet Kamari is smart enough to learn to read behind the mundumugu’s (the shamanistic leader) back. He tells her she cannot learn further despite having a taste of it. If she wishes to read she must accept exile from Kirinyaga. She does not like her choices.

Alphas, Gregory Benford

Bleah. Boring story. If you were stranded in space, falling toward a planet cored out by a superstring rotating very rapidly, falling straight down the middle of the axis of rotation, falling with no thrusting power in your space suit, how would you escape? If you can’t do it, you’ll just fall back in when you reach the other side, eventually setting down in the middle of the planet where the hear incinerates you. Oh yeah, the Alphas are the alien race that is coring out the planet.

At the Rialto, Connie Willis

A story about quantum physics. I gave up reading around five pages in. Just not my bag.

Skin Deep, Kathe Koja

A man becomes obsessed with a thing that has sex with him. A lump of flesh kind of thing. Oookay then!

The Egg, Steven Popkes

I really enjoyed this story! In a future Boston beset by flooding and gangs and whatnot, a young orphan Ira and his alien caregiver Gray come across an egg. Ira fixates on the egg as his relationship with his aunt and cousin degrades, but Gray thinks it might be dangerous. Nothing amazing (nor bad either) science fiction wise in the story, but Popkes does a good job putting you in Ira’s head and making it feel right.

Tales From The Venia Woods, Robert Silverberg

This is an alternate history story from Silverberg’s Roma Eterna universe. The key difference from our history being that the Roman empire did not fall, at least not like it did for us. This story is from a present day Roman republic, somewhere near Venia (Vienna?). Two school children come upon a haunted house in the woods, one that used to be a hunting lodge used by the Roman emperor, and they come across a very aged caretaker who remembers times before the republic supplanted the empire. I kinda liked it, even though it was pretty simple.

Visiting the Dead, William King

While on Earth for a funeral from the space-based overtowns, a visitor is caught in the center of war fever. Not too bad, though not groundbreaking either.

Dori Bangs, Bruce Sterling

Lester Bangs and Dori Seda, two real-life people I’ve never heard of died in the 1980s. Both were involved in counter-culture type stuff. Lester Bangs as a rock journalist. Dori Seda as an alterna-comic book artist and writer. Sterling writes the story of the two of them not dying and instead meeting, dropping out of the counter-culture, and getting married.

The Ends of the Earth, Lucius Shepard

I usually have liked Lucius Shepard stories that have appeared in The Year’s Best S.F. but not this one. An author struggling with a past relationship heads to the Yucatan to exorcise his demons in a relaxing tropical beach setting. There he plays an ancient Mayan game for which he doesn’t know the rules, and is transported into an alternate world. Like Jumanji, but without Robin Williams. Maybe it’s because I’ve already been ruined by the concept of Jumanji that I didn’t like this, even though I never saw the movie.

The Price of Oranges, Nancy Kress

I loved this little time travel story. Harry, a modern day retiree, has a portal to the 1930s in his closet. So he keeps going back then to buy things at cheaper prices and thus making his Social Security check go farther. But he also thinks the 1930s were less cynical, and he wants his grand-daughter to meet someone from that time period so she’ll be less depressed. He hatches a plan…

Lottery Night, S. P. Somtow (Somtow Sucharitkul)

A fantasy story where Samraan goes to the cemetery to spend the night. His great-great-great-aunt’s ghost will hopefully come to him and reveal the winning lottery numbers so his family can reverse their decline. Hopefully. Of course, Samraan could meet demons as well. Dozois calls this story gonzo in the introduction. I agree. It’s different than most fantasy stories that I’ve read.

A Deeper Sea, Alexander Jablokov

This could’ve been a really good story, but in the end I was really disappointed. The premise isn’t too unusual: humans can communicate with dolphins and whales. This is the story of Colonel Ilya Stasov. He tries to use aural pictures to communicate with dolphins. He’s successful, but mostly because in doing so he fakes sonar of the sea bottom to the dolphins, which drives them mad. Kind of like if we established communications with aborigines by feeding them hallucinogenics. Turns out the dolphins could talk the whole time; they’d collectively decided to boycott human interaction in the time of the Greeks. But the hallucinations basically made them cry out I want to die!. The rest of the story is Stasov trying to atone for dragging out speech from them as well as involuntarily enlisting them in the Soviet military.

The problem is that the story doesn’t reveal what was so horrible that Stasov did until late in the plot. And then when it does I don’t think Jablonkov really put enough effort into what pain he imagined the dolphins went through. Stasov’s atonement is to help the dolphins achieve their Messiah story culmination. But the authors explanations of that were so choppy I couldn’t figure out what it was he was actually doing.

The Edge of the World, Michael Swanwick, The Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award

This isn’t really science fiction. It’s fantasy, set in a world very much like our own. All the countries of Earth exist, and there is conflict of some sort between the U.S. and some Arabic countries. Here’s the difference: the world is flat. Swanwick doesn’t bother to explain how it would all work. There’s no directions in the story about where all the countries of a spherical world would fit on a flat one. It doesn’t matter. Three kids, Russ, Piggy, and Donna live somewhere near the edge. One day they decide to descend a set of stairs built into the side of the world. They aren’t the first at all. There’s lots of graffiti and vandalism, as well as trash thrown over the edge and caught up on the landings from air flows. But even this isn’t a huge part of the story. Really, it’s just additional flavor for a story of three kids and how they relate. Pretty damn good.

Silver Lady and the Fortyish Man, Megan Lindholm (Margaret Ogden)

This is an eager story about a failed writer working as a sales clerk at a department store. A nondescript balding fortyish man comes in asking for silk. She only notices him because work is slow that evening. He comes in again another day, and that leads to magical adventures.

The Third Sex, Alan Brennert

Brennert tries to get inside the head of a new third sex, androgynes, people without a sex. How do you find love? Do you care? That sort of thing. I thought it not all that insightful.

Winter on the Belle Fourche, Neal Barrett, Jr.

Barrett’s story isn’t a deep exploration of anything. It’s a nice alternate history western what-if. What if Emily Dickinson traveled the west and got herself stranded in the winter in a cabin with a western woodsman/trapper/hunter? What if he was also a poet? I really liked it, because Barrett made some pretty good, if somewhat stock, characters.

Enter a Soldier. Later, Enter Another, Robert Silverberg

In U.S. elections lately there has been a focus on personality. George Bush is your next door neighbor. Hillary Clinton is too emotional, and simultaneously too cold. As if we really know how to judge what or who a person really is. All we have is their public persona. There is a large volume of information about politicians these days. Is it enough to really know?

Silverberg’s story explores what a person might be like if we recreated them based on the public record. A fantastic computer program creates artificial intelligence based on what we know about a historical figure. The idea is common (Hyperion had one), but in this short form it’s done fairly well. Francisco Pizarro meets Socrates in a computer simulation. It definitely reminds me that I hate the Socratic method. Resnick uses it in dialog in a particularly annoying fashion. Here it isn’t overdone and it fits, because it is Socrates.

Relationships, Robert Sampson

Short short story about a guy who starts seeing women he’s been involved with appear out of thin air. Mad? They tell him he is not, and also that he can’t continue to live in the past.

Just Another Perfect Day, John Varley

This is 50 First Dates. I don’t suppose they made the movie from the story, but the parallels are there. After an accident, a man wakes up every morning with no recollection of what he did the previous day. He last remembers a day in the summer of 1986. He continually wakes up the day after, at least to his recollection. It’s all written as a letter to himself from his previous day’s self. Also, there’s some business with aliens.

The Loch Moose Monster, Janet Kagan

At first I didn’t like this story of life on a colony planet, but as I read further it grew on me. What annoyed me at first was not understanding what was going on, but in the end I think Kagan introduced things at just the right point to keep the story moving along. Loch Moose is a lake jokingly named after Loch Ness with a twist. Jokingly at least until a real monster shows up and the colony’s genetic policewoman (so to speak, she has more duties than that) Mama Jason heads there to find out what’s going on.

The Magic Bullet, Brian Stableford

A murder mystery of genetic engineering. Rather pedestrian except for the ending. Meaning I can’t really say much about the premise of the story without ruining it.

The Odd Old Bird, Avram Davidson

This is a Dr. Eszterhazy story. It’s a recurring character in some sort of European empire/country. In this case, he and his genteel fellow scientists are discussing Archeopteryx, the transitional species between reptiles and birds. Except on of the folks in the discussion dismisses the topic with Seen it. This story just bored me. I think I skipped the Ezterhazy story the one other time I saw one. They just don’t grab me.

Great Work of Time, John Crowley

A work of time travel fiction, concerning a secret society started by Cecil Rhodes to preserve the British Empire. I think I am tired of time travel stories, what with all the jumping around to avoid paradoxes and whatnot. Occasionally there’s something interesting about them, but it’s rare. The more interesting part of this story is the whole preserve the British Empire aspect of the story. What would British hegemony look like? Is British civilization a good thing? This review looks at the secret society as an allegory for the British Empire itself. As it tries ever more complicated means to attempting to keep control, the more it inevitably will lose it. In the order the story is told, I agree. In the order of time, when time travel is involved, things become much more muddled. Which happens a lot with time travel stories. Of course, I did like another time travel story in this collection, so don’t mind me.

Well, my general impression is that I wasn’t as fond of this anthology as I have been of some other volumes in Gardner Dozois’ series. I’m not about to go check statistics, or even really compile them. I quite enjoyed five of the stories. A lot of others were decent, but didn’t really move me. Dozois seems to like to end these with a longish novella. I think he’d do better to start and end with punchy, really good stories. Draw the reader in quickly and send them off with a bang. That didn’t happen this time, at least not for me.

Title: The year’s best science fiction: seventh annual collection
Editor: Gardner Dozois
Cover artist: Thomas Gold (or Cold, I can’t read his signature real well and neither can I find any info on the web)
Series: Year’s best science fiction; 7
Imprint / publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Format: Paperback
Length: xxvi, 598 p.
Publication date: 1990
ISBN-10: 0-312-04452-6
LC classification: PS648.S3 Y43

Not much to say generally. Another pretty good collection of short fiction. Though I do wonder at the preponderance of fantasy stories, particularly given that St. Martin’s was in the 2nd year of their Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series at the time this was published. They did have that niche covered.

Surfacing, Walter Jon Williams

This story takes two S.F. plots and mingles them, and I don’t really like the effect too well. In the first plot, Anthony brings whales to another world because they can help him communicate with a species that lives underwater on that world. Anthony was a scientist who helped decode whale speech. After the discovery that a set of resonances underwater were actually an alien species, Anthony heads to that world to try to decode it, and to figure out what these unseen creatures are. Plot two revolves around a Kyklops, a multi-dimensional alien. This alien has a contract with a woman that allows him to take over her body at will. Anthony falls in love with her, and they plot to release her from the alien’s control. I’ve found other decoding alien languages stories boring, but here I was very interested in it. The damsel-in-distress story? Not so much. The mix? Eh.

Home Front, James Patrick Kelly

Using an apparently unintentional prescient plot device, Kelly explores youth who are eligible to join the military and fight for America. It kind of covers the same ground as Ender’s Game and Lord of the Flies, but in a shorter more digestible chunk. The prescient part is an interchangeable position of Johnny America, the P.R. soldier of the military. Unlike G.I. Joe, Johnny is more of a reality show construction. Except there weren’t reality shows in the 80s when this was written.

The Man Who Loved The Vampire Lady, Brian Stableford

A kind of S.F. take on a fantasy trope, vampires. In this version, vampirism is a blood-born disease sometimes transmitted sexually that allows the vampire to live a long time. Vampires have essentially become the ruling nobility in Europe. Someone finally invents a microscope, and Lady Carmilla (a vampire) assigns her former lover Edmund (a human) to examine the device. He’s a mechanician, which I assume means he’s a tinkerer. He grasps the microscope, and understands the meaning of the little amoeba animals he sees, that they carry the vampirism trait. He knows that the vampires won’t let him live long with the knowledge. Fairly pedestrian idea, but decently well-written.

Peaches For Mad Molly, Stephen Gould

Wow! This was an awesome story. Characterization not so involved. It’s more a concept, and a pretty original one at that, wedded to a thriller mentality. The concept is that when giant skyscrapers are built in the future, a culture of people will live on the outside of them. Think rock climbers in the extreme. The are poor and unable to afford to live inside, or they are malcontents who just don’t fit in there. Our main character decides to go on a trading run down the side of his building, but he has to cross a 10 story area controlled by bandits. He gets past them easily on the way down. But climbing is slower and on the way back up they are ready and waiting for him. Just an awesome story!

The Last Article, Harry Turtledove

Alternate history where the Third Reich wins World War II. In India, the newly dominant Germans take over from the English and inherit their problems with the restless subcontinent. A German officer who is the military governor takes on Mohandas Gandhi. Turtledoves conclusion is that this time Gandhi does not win. The analysis seems to be that nonviolence requires two things to work that would not be present: a very courageous population that would be willing to sacrifice their lives on a large scale, and an opponent that is squeamish about killing people. If the authority has no problem with killing thousands of non-violent protesters, then they will emerge victorious if it scares people into compliance. I think Tian An Men just might have proved Turtledove right.

Stable Strategies For Middle Management, Eileen Gunn

A story about gene manipulation where people can get animal-like bodies. Then it gets surreal by being set in a middle management office and the workers use their changes for advancement. It didn’t really click with me, though it was an interesting juxtaposition.

In Memoriam, Nancy Kress

Would you give up your memory of who you are if that enabled you to live forever?

Kirinyaga, Mike Resnick

I’ve read this story before, but for some reason I always think of the plot of Ivory when I see the title Kirinyaga. Ivory is not as good. Koriba is the mundumugu of the Kikuyu tribe. Originally located in Kenya, they now have their own planet maintained by Maintenance. Kenya is essentially one big metropolis by this time in the future. Maintenance is supposed to have a prime directive like instruction. The Kikuyu get to run it how they want and Maintenance is not supposed to interfere. Only one of the traditions of the Kikuyu is that babies born feet first are demons, and must be killed. Which horrifies Maintenance, as the child of course had no choice in which tradition he would like.

The Girl Who Loved Animals, Bruce McAllister

In the future, many animals are extinct. Some people want to bring them back, using methods like we have heard for dinosaurs. D.N.A. for dinosaurs can be found embedded in amber on occasion. Or mammoths in ice. To my knowledge, we don’t have enough D.N.A. for these animals to clone them yet. And we really don’t have a way to gestate them. Dolly the cloned sheep was gestated by another sheep. But, in the future, we will likely have genetic records for some of the animals that might become extinct. We have live specimens. We can take samples and record everything about their D.N.A. And so if they become extinct, we could recreate them. If we have a way to gestate them. Without artificial uteruses, we’re kind of S.O.L. But, there may be these groups of people trying to revive them. They may have money. And some women may need the money badly enough to take it for these purposes.

The Last Of The Winnebagoes (Hugo award for best novella, Nebula award for best novella), Connie Willis

A nice novella about a future when environmentalism is standard. States have outlawed gas hogs and water is a precious scarcity. Many animals, particularly pets, have become extinct. The protagonist is a photojournalist, one of a dying breed as automation pushes humans out of even that field. On the way to his assignment, he sees a dead jackal in the road. Jackals are rare, though not extinct. But seeing it brings up memories of his dog, over which he obsesses. Still, he dutifully shows up to take pictures of and talk to two older people who live in an R.V., traveling highways and making a living by charging people to see their Winnebago. Human interest story. But he’s too distraught to continue on to his second assignment at the governor’s press conference. Here’s the catch: that makes him look suspicious to the Humane Society which is investigating the death of the jackal. I loved this story.

Love In Vain, Lewis Shiner

This story was included in The Year’s Best Fantasy: Second Annual Collection which I reviewed in July. It’s still a great story, but it doesn’t really seem like S.F. to me. Love this story. Go read it.

The Hob, Judith Moffett

Hobs are gnomelike creatures that live in Britain. Creatures of legend. They feel a need to serve masters, kind of like house-elves in Harry Potter. But as modern life encroaches, the hobs retreat from interacting with humans and hide. Except one of them, Elphi, gets careless and allows a backpacker, Jenny, to see him. It’s a nice story, but it didn’t do a whole lot for me. Very ho-hum. Oh, and the S.F. hook is that hobs are really stranded aliens. And that’s about the length of that hook too.

Our Neural Chernobyl, Bruce Sterling

A really short story that describes a future evolutionary cataclysm from the perspective of an even further future. The neural Chernobyl depicted is a genetically engineered virus that makes people smarter, though most can’t handle it and burn out crazy. But it also jumps to a few animals as well.

House Of Bones, Robert Silverberg

A time-traveler is stranded in the past, among Cro-Magnons. Pushes the idea that our assumptions that Cro-Magnon’s were primitive may not be quite correct. The premise isn’t all that exciting, but it’s a pretty well-written story. I enjoyed it.

Schrödinger’s Kitten, George Alec Effinger

Supposedly illustrating the Schrödinger’s cat phenomena, I just found this story confusing.

Do Ya, Do Ya, Wanna Dance?, Howard Waldrop

Another story that I really wouldn’t classify as science fiction. Maybe I’m just missing something. Frank is still a local in the town where he went to high school. It’s time for the 20 year reunion. Frank becomes a guide to show all the returnees what’s happened to the various places the class used to haunt. The highlight of the reunion is supposed to be a performance by the long since split up high school rock band that briefly achieved stardom right after high school. Only something interesting happens when they play one of their songs. Howard Waldrop stories always seem to have a bit of fun in them. At least the three I’ve read previously. Not deep, but decently good.

The Growth Of The House Of Usher, Brian Stableford

A bit of a homage to Edgar Allen Poe, including the use of language and style of Poe’s period. Here a scientist named Usher lives in a house of biomass in which genetically engineered creatures live. They build the house. They keep it running. Usher wants to pass on his knowledge before he dies, and so invites a colleague to the house.

Glacier, Kim Stanley Robinson

A new ice age has descended on North America. A large glacier is just north of Boston, where the Canadian refugees at the center of the story live. Dad is a professor. Son heads out to the glacier to play by himself a lot. Times are tough. I’m not generally a Kim Stanley Robinson fan, but I liked this story. It shows the effect of climate change on ordinary people. No real explanation of the societal impact of this ice age. You have to glean that from the conversations the kid has with his parents, and some of his interactions with others. So it comes off as a very personal story rather than a birds-eye view.

Sanctuary, James Lawson

This story reminds me a lot of Altered Carbon, except this was written well before. Basically, a computer software designer is found in his office with his mind wiped. And another one working for another company is as well. Cardenas is a cop. His job is to figure out who killed these guys when there is no evidence except the bodies. I’m gonna do something here that I don’t normally do: issue a pretty blatant spoiler. These guys kill themselves. Here’s why I’m spoiling it. They kill themselves because of The Secret. In other words, the law of attraction, which is the stupidest thing ever. The version in this story is that if you repeat something often enough, you set up a harmonic resonance for that action that embeds itself in space-time. Anyone else doing that action latches on to that resonance and can do the action just a bit better than would be expected. So these guys get a super-computer to repeat some program that emulates their brains. And it does it so often that they are literally whisked into the space-time continuum. Urg. Since when did the law of attraction get any traction in anything having to do with science? I’ll buy faster than light travel before this crap.

The Dragon Line, Michael Swanwick

Mordred and Merlin in modern times. I wasn’t so impressed with this.

Mrs. Shummel Exits A Winner, John Kessel

Another story that isn’t really science fiction so much as fantasy. Did Dozois do this in the other anthologies I’ve read and I just not notice? Anyway, it’s not a bad story. Mrs. Schummel is a sad old woman who plays bingo. Lots of bingo. One night at the bingo hall a boy sits next to her. He doesn’t talk. He wins on every bingo card, but never yells bingo! or even waves over the judges. Mrs. Shummel is flabbergasted but doesn’t want him to win over her so she says nothing. He offers her the card, for a price. Will she take it?

Emissary, Stephen Kraus

A researcher finds an alien artifact and turns it on. There isn’t anything groundbreaking in this story, but I thought it was pretty snifty nonetheless.

It Was The Heat, Pat Cadigan

Not science fiction. Not something I liked. The second story in the volume to have appeared in The Year’s Best Fantasy: Second Annual Collection.

Skin Deep, Kristine Kathryn Rusch

On an alien world a young woman is starting to have signs of a mysterious disease. Decent story.

Dying In Hull, D. Alexander Smith (David Alexander Smith)

Man, it must suck to have a common last name like Smith and on top of that use your middle name only to have some famous author come along, use your name, and hog all the top Google spots. Anyway, this is a story of the sea rising and slowly inundating the town of Hull Massachusetts. Like Washington State’s Harry Truman, who refused to leave the side of Mt. St. Helens knowing it would probably be his death, Ethel Cobb continues to live in Hull. There she deals with marauding gangs and memories of people long gone. I think this is the oldest story I’ve read that deals with global warming. I recommend it.

Distances, Kathe Koja

Eh. People are specially altered to received faster than light communications from robotic space ships on their way to Alpha Centauri. This story had no oomph for me. Characters were stock. The ideas were stock.

Famous Monsters, Kim Newman

This was fun! A Martian gets in the movies and after a long career mostly in B-movie roles writes this memoir-like retrospective.

The Scalehunter’s Beautiful Daughter, Lucius Shepard

Wow! Beautiful fantasy novella! Original and powerful. Of course, every Lucius Shepard story I’ve read has been unique. Definitely a fitting end to this anthology.

Title: The year’s best science fiction: sixth annual collection
Editor: Gardner Dozois
Cover artist: Armand Cabrera
Series: year’s best science fiction ; 6
Imprint / publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Format: Paperback
Length: xxiv, 596 p.
Publication date: 1989
ISBN-10: 0-312-03009-6

Sorry for the extended time between books. Again, this blog isn’t abandoned. Sometimes it just takes me longer to read my books. Such as this one, which is 697 pages long, not counting Dozois’ year in review summary of 1995 at the beginning. Now, on to the stories:

A Woman’s Liberation, Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula Le Guin returns to her Ekumen universe for a story of slaves on the planet Werel. The story meanders through Radosse Rakam’s life as her master dies, and his son frees his slaves. However, other nearby landowners don’t take too kindly to this and simply round up the former slaves and re-enslave them. After a daring escape, they become freedmen in the city, where the abolitionist groups meet and debate their future plans. The government cracks down, and again our heroine escapes to a former colony, freed from it’s slaveowners for a few years. Only there, she finds that she is just as enslaved by the men as she was on Werel. Frankly, this story just fell flat for me. The characters are pretty flat, and the feminist lesson being taught isn’t subtle, nor does it really provide a new take on freedom, for women or anyone. It’s just a pretty blunt re-hash of stuff you can read in other places and in other forms, but much less engaging.

Starship Day, Ian R. MacLeod

This little story is about a starship that has set out from Earth to a nearby star to look for life or a habitable planet. The day for when the starship will re-establish communications with Earth has been calculated, and everyone on Earth is eagerly awaiting Starship Day to find out if humans have made first contact. Still, not everyone is all that thrilled. One man even commits suicide. The reason is because of a little twist that is revealed at the end. Normally, I wouldn’t be too circumspect with spoilers for an 11 year old book, but if you do pick this up, this is a decent story and it’s better if you get to go into the twist blind at least once. (Thanks to Steve for the link to the story online.)

A Place with Shade, Robert Reed

I didn’t really get this story. A father hires a terraformer to teach his daughter how to terraform a cave system on his private planet. There’s some sort of fight going on between him and his daughter, who is an adult. Either she’s crazy, or he is. Anyway, the terraformer doesn’t realize all this, and gets caught in the middle. And then she’s attacking him with their terraformed cave, and I got lost.

Luminous, Greg Egan

Like Border Guards in a previously reviewed Year’s Best S.F., this is sort of a hard-S.F. story. The premise is that mathematics behaves somewhat like matter and energy. Until some sort of matter exercises a mathematical theorem, that theorem obeys Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. You don’t know what the truth of the theorem is. Keep in mind that proving some theorem implies that all related theorems are proven, so only the most esoteric mathematics can be unexercised. So, the protagonists look for undetermined mathematics and find them. Meanwhile, corporate raiders are trying to get their math so they can subvert randomness somehow. And as they explore the math, someone else is fighting them through other math somewhere.

The Promise of God, Michael F. Flynn

This seemed more like a fantasy story to me, with a nanny watching over a charge who possesses magic powers and eventually becoming his wife.

Death in the Promised Land, Pat Cadigan

In this imagined Earth, people spend more time in post-apocalyptic World-of-Warcraft style virtual realms, the most popular of which is one of New York City. These virtual realities are full on virtual reality. The story revolves around an aimless youth who is killed both in reality and in the simulation at the same time, and the police detective (a non-user of virtual reality) trying to determine who performed the murder. A few interesting bits, but overall not particularly exciting.

For White Hill, Joe Haldeman

Nice little story about earth in the future after/during a war with an alien race. The aliens poisoned Earth and made it uninhabitable. Afterward, humans find a counter and some begin to trickle back. An art contest is commissioned to celebrate Earth, and people from all over colonized worlds travel there to participate. Only while there the aliens poison the sun, causing it to age and begin it’s trajectory toward being a red giant on an accelerated pace. Everyone who can get off Earth does, but the artists are left behind. Some commit suicide. Others try to incorporate the impending demise of Earth into their art. And others simply try to go on with what they did planned before.

Some Like It Cold, John Kessel

A particularly short and not very novel story, but one that grabbed me nonetheless. Time travel has been invented and the entertainment industry makes huge use of it to bring back celebrities to start in new movies. Only sometimes they don’t always work out exactly like they should. But no matter, there are infinite moments in which someone can be stolen out of the past, so if the person doesn’t work out taken from one particular moment, they can be taken from another. Each grab creates a new universe, so nothing changes the timestream and there are lots of time traveling former celebrities around now. Including a shoe-shining Albert Einstein, who was presumably grabbed too young and doesn’t develop into a genius.

The Death of Captain Future, Allen Steele

Nice bit of a space western, populated with an interplanetary sailor stuck on a ship with a crazy captain who purchased his commission and thinks he’s Captain Future. A chance encounter with a plague ridden give Captain Future his chance at the glory he always wanted to fight off space pirates.

The Lincoln Train, Maureen F. McHugh

A short alternate history set during the civil war. What if John Wilkes Booth injured Lincoln so severely that he was incapacitated. Dire consequences follow, with Southerners rounded up and sent off to various camps. The popular rumor blames this all on Seward.

We Were Out of Our Minds with Joy, David Marusek

So far, my favorite story in this collection, and like the story Wedding Album shows a very interesting and novel future. Extended life, extreme integration with computers through nano-machines, living holographically, and a war with biological agents. Thereafter, militia computers known as slugs constantly sample human DNA for infection by rogue agents. Those not liquidated on the spot are seared, with their bodies altered so that any biological remnants of themselves self-destruct in small fiery poofs. Including things like semen and eyebrows. Which makes for interesting sex, though these people are avoided generally. The story is about Sam (a semi-famous artist/designer) and Eleanor (a powerful politician) who fall in love, move in together, and receive permission to have a child (in a very interesting fashion, of course). Marusek melds the hard and soft S.F. very well, making a very readable and intriguing story.

Radio Waves, Michael Swanwick

After death, ghosts travel the Earth via metallic objects such as telephone wires and metal conduits. Two ghosts meet and resolve issues from their lives, while chased by a ghost killer.

Wang’s Carpets, Greg Egan

Another what is alive? type S.F. story. In the future, humans discover primitive life on another world, carpet-like sheets of fungal sea-life. While not sentient, the carpets encode mathematics, wherein humans determine that the mathematics itself shows signs of sentient life. Are they alive and what does it mean for humans who have long since encoded themselves inside virtual worlds and no longer live corporeal existence.

Casting at Pegasus, Mary Rosenblum

Nifty story about a girl who sneaks into an abandoned airport to create temporary light sculptures. She’s accompanied by a tagger and chased by the night watchman. Until tragedy strikes and they fall through a rotted floor, when she finds out the night watchman isn’t just faceless. The S.F. element here is pretty small, and frankly I think this would work better as a completely mainstream story, but it’s still modestly nice.

Looking for Kelly Dahl, Dan Simmons

A former teacher is transported through the past and future by a former student, Kelly Dahl. These worlds are devoid of all people except the two of them, and Kelly wants him to kill her to exorcise both their demons.

Think Like a Dinosaur, James Patrick Kelly

Humans meet another species. Other species has very advanced technology, including a method of transporting matter (including life) across light-years of distance. Like the transporters of Star Trek, humans are encoded, the information is transmitted and the people are reconstructed on the far side. But what do you do with the person who still remains on this side? It’s not like the matter is consumed, so now you have two of the same person!

Coming of Age in Karhide, Ursula K. Le Guin

This felt like filler to me. As in, I must explain every piece of Karhide. I wasn’t moved much by the story.

Genesis, Poul Anderson

I read like 5 pages of this and skipped on.

Feigenbaum Number, Nancy Kress

This story is about a guy who can see both real people and the ideal person they could be. It’s depressing and disorienting to him. And then he meets another person who can see the same ideal people.

Home, Geoff Ryman

Ryman has written a very twisted near-future story where life isn’t valued so much. Kind of a picture of social darwinism if it were taken up by the public as a defining philosophy and taken to it’s logical end. Ryman captures the fatal flaw of social darwinism, that unlike actual evolution, it isn’t the most adept or adaptable that are selected for necessarily. It could be the useless who survive, and the human race easily paints itself into a social darwinist corner.

There Are No Dead, Terry Bisson

I loved this story about three men who create a fantasy world for themselves in the woods in their youth. Over the years, the live their lives and continue to reunite for yearly camping trips. Yes, there is an S.F. element, but it’s not the fantasy world they create for themselves.

Recording Angel, Paul J. McAuley

This is the story of a human, who goes by Angel, who returns as part of a crew that explored other galaxies. It’s millions of years from when she left the Milky Way because of time dilation and humanity has become different. In fact, humanity’s descendants have been genetically programmed to render assistance to the Preservers (original humanity) should they re-appear.

Elvis Bearpaw’s Luck, William Sanders

If you go to William Sanders’ web site through the link above, you’ll figure out he’s kind of cantankerous. That shows in this story about Native Americans after wars have decimated black and white people, leaving Indians and their descendants populating North America. They cling to their traditions, but something has been lost a bit. Our narrator is a youth who squires his elderly blind cantankerous grandfather around. The setting is the upcoming Games which attract nearby tribes to participate, and there is a traditional truce during Game-time. A lot of the elements have been used before, but Sanders puts them together in an inventive way, and I laughed out loud (which I rarely do) at the commencement of the big Game. It fits so well with contemporary Indian reservations but is totally at odds with the stereotypical white views of Indians. You expect the noble Indians to have noble games, and this is definitely not that.

Mortimer Gray’s History of Death, Brian Stableford

Kind of an exploration of the theory that what makes us human is our fight against death, as seen through the eyes of a future historian of death. Others will probably find this to be more profound than I did.

Title: The year’s best science fiction: thirteenth annual collection
Editor: Gardner Dozois
Series: The year’s best science fiction ; 13
Imprint / publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Format: Hardcover
Length: lxiii, 704 p.
Publication date: 1996
ISBN-10: 0-312-14451-2