I’ve generally liked the Lucius Shepard stories I’ve read in Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best collections. Some of them I’ve really liked. So when I saw a Shepard book in the piles at the Friends of the Seattle Public Library semi-annual book sale, I grabbed it.

Technically, this is a literary collection. The book starts with a non-fiction piece expanded from a story Shepard wrote for Spin magazine about hobos. Yup, actual train riding hobos. I didn’t realize people still did this, but they do. There was a kerfuffle about a hobo gang that was murdering hundreds of people, and Spin asked Shepard to investigate. I’m surprised I missed this, because the primary purveyor of the hobo gang story was a Spokane Washington detective, and I lived in the area at the time the story came out (1998), but I missed it.

For some time, Shepard rode the rails seeking to talk to members of the Freight Train Riders of America (F.T.R.A.), the gang involved in the murderous rampage. Only it turns out, of course, that the gang is mostly homeless drunks. While they do get violent sometimes, they aren’t exactly the scourge they’d been portrayed as on Americas Most Wanted and other shows.

Shepard gets philosophical about the train tramp life. Hard and short-lived in many cases, but he asserts it has many charms:

Freight routes cover portions of the country never seen by anyone apart from those who ride the trains, and there are places of great beauty that will be forgotten. With no one to look at them, even if only through drunken and corrupted eyes, it will be as if parts of our map have vanished, in a very real sense restoring that map to something resembling the unfinished depiction of the continent that was deemed accurate more than a century ago.

After Shepard’s non-fiction piece, the book includes two short stories. The first, Over Yonder fits in very well with my impressions of Shepard’s Year’s Best stories. A hobo named Billy Long Gone (because his real name is just too prissy to tell others) catches a train out of Oregon that takes him to a magical place called Yonder. Magical, but not wonderful. Downright stupifying, in fact. Residents lose all their cares, which is not a good thing. Billy Long Gone is one of the few who retains any hopes at all, and his is to cross a distant mountain range, where rumor has it monsters abound and a fabled city exists. Very enjoyable story, though I didn’t understand the ending much at all.

The second short story was of a non-fantastic variety. Jailbait tells a story of a romance in the railyards between Madcat and Grace. Grace is new to the hobo life. She’s a gutter punk, runaway from home and sees riding the rails as a romantic step up from life on the Ave (or Spokane’s equivalent). Madcat is a cynical type who couldn’t care less about Grace (or anything), but avails himself of Grace’s body which Grace uses in her own cynical way. Mutual symbiosis in the face of extreme violence. But it turns out really not to be as cynical as it could be.

Title: Two Trains Running
Author: Lucius Shepard
Cover creator: John Picacio
Imprint / publisher: Golden Gryphon Press
Format: Hardcover
Length: 112 p.
Publication date: 2004
ISBN-10: 1-930846-23-1

Of all the Year’s Best S.F. collection’s by Gardner Dozois, this one might be my favorite so far. There weren’t any stories that just blew me away, but there were only a couple I hated and I quite liked quite a bit. Best stories: Bears Discover Fire, Tower of Babylon, and Learning to Be Me. And now thoughts on the stories…

Mr. Boy, James Patrick Kelly

There’s nothing in this story about genetic manipulation/body modification that I haven’t read before. But it’s still really really good. Mr. Boy is the assumed named of Peter Cage, a 25 year old boy. He’s been genetically modified to stay the age of 13, and acts that age. His mom is a ¾ scale statue of liberty. Being rich, they can do all this. And then he meets Treemonisha Joplin, whose family isn’t rich. She wants in, and Mr. Boy increasingly wants out. It was really easy to get in to the character of Mr. Boy, despite the strangeness.

The Shobies’ Story, Ursula K. Le Guin

Uh. Okay. I think this is about some sort of new instantaneous space travel that ends up requiring those who do the traveling to believe in it. Or something.

The Caress, Greg Egan

Performance art gone bad. Evil genius genetically creates human/animal hybrids to mimic paintings he’s seen. And more. Very twisted. Pretty good. I especially liked the ending, where the victim doesn’t feel anger.

A Braver Thing, Charles Sheffield

Good story about a physicist who wins the Nobel Prize. This is his first-person account of how he made the discovery. Only tangentially science fiction. The meat of the story could take place at any time.

We See Things Differently, Bruce Sterling

Since this story first saw publication, not a whole lot has changed. In fact the story seems even more relevant, even if the time line in the story places the plot nearly a decade ago. U.S. and Russia in decline. The Arab world ascendant. It’s been unified into a caliphate, and although it’s clearly won the cultural battle there’s still resentment against the U.S. An Arab journalist travels to the U.S. to cover a patriotic rock singer who is galvanizing the populace. I saw the ending coming a mile away, so it is kind of predictable. Well written though.

And The Angels Sing, Kate Wilhelm

Kind of a first contact story. Small town newspaperman comes on a being stumbling around town. At first he takes it for one of the local girls, but when he gets her inside he realizes she isn’t a she. The story could be his ticket out. Very well written. I liked it.

Past Magic, Ian R. MacLeod

This story didn’t resonate with me. In a somewhat dystopian future, a rich person tries to hold on to her memories by re-creating her daughter. Told from the viewpoint of the ex-husband father. Not bad, but seemed old hat and I couldn’t get into the characters.

Bears Discover Fire, Terry Bisson

Just an awesome story. One day, bears do what man did tens of thousands of years ago. The bears discover fire. I love the mixture of the practical and absurd. This is begging to be made into a short film.

The All-Consuming, Lucius Shepard and Robert Frazier

Lucius Shepard seems to write stories that I either love or that just bore me. This is one of the boring ones. I can see where some folks will like this one, but the style just doesn’t suit my tastes. In this fantasy story, a rich person decides to grok the world by eating it. Our protagonist is a jungle guide type person who provides the rich guy with meals from a magical jungle, and they all begin to notice a change.

Personal Silence, Molly Gloss

This is one type of science fiction I really like, where the science fiction is integral to the story, but it’s presence is not overwhelming. A protester walks around the world engaging in a personal silence (i.e., not talking) to try to end an endless world war of some type. On the Olympic peninsula he runs into a young pre-teen who dreams a little precognitively. Really liked this one.

Invaders, John Kessel

So if you’ve read this blog for the last few months or some of my comments on other folks blogs, you’ve read me saying that I think the meaning of a story isn’t really up to the author. By that I meant that once released, the author gives up exclusive control over the interpretation. If he/she later says something about that book, I feel that readers may at that point decide for themselves whether to accept the additional input or not. Sometimes authors have changes of heart. Sometimes they were just chicken-shit when they wrote their book and didn’t want to say something. After a story has been released, the owner is the reader. The author only owns it until it’s released. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. One way though for an author to have a lasting say is to do what John Kessel did in this story, and that I’ve never seen done elsewhere. He inserted little mini-essay like pieces on his literary intentions about Invaders into the text of the story itself. He broke the 4th wall, so to speak. Anyway, I kind of like it. And I really like that the aliens are just here for our cocaine.

The Cairene Purse, Michael Moorcock

Long and slow story about an engineer who travels to Egypt looking for his sister, who he has reason to believe has run into some trouble. It’s a degraded earth by the time of the story. And locals think the sister is into witchcraft or in league with aliens. I just didn’t care about the character. And the drawn out storytelling really put me off.

The Coon Rolled Down and Ruptured His Larinks, A Squeezed Novel by Mr. Skunk, Dafydd ab Hugh

Sometimes I think speculative fiction appears on a grand scale too much. Nation against nation, species against species, fighting for the survival of all that is known to man or alien. Dafydd ab Hugh’s story is small scale. After a genetic accident elevates animals, three of them set off on a quest to bring Progrets and Democrazy to one of man’s redoubts. Kind of hard to get in to the story, but it had a spark that I don’t often see in S.F.

Tower of Babylon, Ted Chiang

Another small scale fantasy story. Ted Chiang imagines the tower of Babel fable from the perspective of a miner digging through the vault of heaven after the tower’s been built to reach that high. I believe this won the Nebula, and for good reason.

The Death Artist, Alexander Jablokov

I only read seven or eight pages of this and moved on. One of those stories that jumps around and changes settings and doesn’t really tell you what’s going on. I don’t like being in a maze of mirrors.

The First Since Ancient Persia, John Brunner

Scientists conduct experiments on unsuspecting local population. New person stumbles on it all. Trouble follows. Not original. Not awful, but I felt like I could have missed this one and not really missed anything.

Inertia, Nancy Kress

Previous story was about biological manipulation. So’s this one, with a much more interesting idea behind it. Some sort of disease strikes humanity, disfiguring the infected with rope-like blemishes. It’s communicable, though it doesn’t seem to have any other apparent effects. Nevertheless, no one wants to catch it so those who have it are banished to internment camps, which become permanent. There’s a little of the Inside/Outside type of theme common to internment camp stories, but there’s also a lot more levels to this than there is in many short stories.

Learning to Be Me, Greg Egan

Damn fine story. The only story I’ve ever seen that tackles head on one of the implications of uploading oneself into a computer. What happens to the old copy? There’s a bit of David Marusek’s Wedding Album in this, as well as one I can’t remember the title of, where transporting one’s self across the universe instantaneously resulted in a very bad side effect of two copies of one’s self. The story fuses it all together in a fairly horrifying way. It’s also pretty clever too.

Cibola, Connie Willis

Didn’t like this one. A descendant of El Turco, a Native American guide for Coronado who led the Spanish explorer on a wild goose chase for Cibola, leads a Denver newspaper reporter on a wild goose chase for Cibola. Connie Willis led me on a wild goose chase for Cibola.

Walking the Moons, Jonathan Lethem

Virtual reality is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Rainmaker Cometh, Ian McDonald

I didn’t get this and I didn’t finish it.

Hot Sky, Robert Silverberg

Really liked this story about a future after global warming. Small scale story of a boat capturing an iceberg in the Pacific to tow it to San Francisco which like all cities in the story needs fresh water. The plot is fairly conventional. Another boat is in distress, forcing the captain to choose between helping the other boat and bringing fresh water to a city. I liked it because Silverberg put a lot of effort into the details of the story, which all fit together well.

White City, Lewis Shiner

I usually like Shiner stories (the couple that I’ve read). But this one was pretty emotionless. Although the story is supposedly about an emotionless man, I just don’t think that worked.

Love and Sex Among the Invertebrates, Pat Murphy

In a nominally post-apocalypse story, one of the last (dying) people alive is a robotics person. She creates a couple of robots to live on after her, with pseudo-sexual organs. It’s less prurient than the description makes it seem. Kind of on the weird side really. I didn’t get in to it, but I thought it was an interesting story nonetheless.

The Hemingway Hoax, Joe Haldeman

Huh. I must be missing something big here. I really liked this story up until the ending, and then I just got lost. Someday perhaps I’ll re-read it and I’ll get the ending and like it. The story has that sort of feel to it. Like pasta. Better after re-heating.

Title: The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Eighth Annual Collection
Editor: Gardner Dozois
Cover creator: Michael Whelan (artist)
Series: The Year’s Best Science Fiction; 8
Imprint / publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Format: Paperback
Length: xxxii, 624 p.
Publication date: 1991
ISBN-10: 0-312-06009-2

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

Since I like reading the annual Year’s Best S.F. collection put out by Gardner Dozois and St. Martin’s Press, I figured it would be worth the effort to try St. Martin’s companion series covering fantasy and horror fiction. I thought that I might like it better than I do other fantasy, since I’m generally not a fan of Tolkien derivatives. Perhaps the short form would lead to experimentation and something more interesting to me. And it seems, it does lead to more experimentation. Unfortunately, not of the kind I like. Most of the works in this collection were just too confusing for me. However, toward the end, particularly with the horror stories, the collection became a lot stronger. Some of the stories are simply amazing. But overall I didn’t like it as much as I like the S.F. series. This isn’t to say it’s bad. Sometimes I think fiction is just awful. This could be considered good if I understood it, or I was into this kind of deliberately obfuscating fiction.

But on to the stories…

Death is Different, Lisa Goldstein

I suppose these sorts of stories weren’t all over the place in the 1980s, so it was a bit more unusual. By these sorts of stories I mean stories that mix fantasy and reality. I generally like such stories over what’s called high fantasy. But this one fell flat with me. It wasn’t bad, but it didn’t seem very imaginative. Monica Schwartz is a journalist, sent to cover travel stories in the city of Amaz where people speak Lurqazi and a Communist rebel leader called Cumaq is fighting a war against the government, possibly with the help of the Russians. She secretly hopes to cover something of the geo-political story, and tries to get an interview with Cumaq. And succeeds, despite the fact that he is killed within her first 24 hours in the city. See, in this country, death is different. Not that she can prove he’s alive, or find him again. That would be too easy. So she returns home empty-handed. But when she does, she finds her husband has died in an accident, and she hurriedly tries to return to Amaz. Only she can’t. The trick to anything in Amaz, I guess, is that you can’t look for what you are seeking. One has to just stumble on it or something.

The Tale of the Rose and the Nightingale (and What Came of It), Gene Wolfe

This isn’t the usual swords and sorcery high fantasy story. It’s set in Egypt, with a combination of Muslim imagery and Egyptian gods. Ali is a street urchin taken by a storyteller’s tale of a bird in love with a rose bush. Another old man listening to the story says the tale is true, so Ali accompanies the storyteller and the old man to see the rose bush. Only the old man and the storyteller have lured Ali into a scheme to get him to bring them a magical rose from the rose bush. But when Ali gets to the bush (in a walled garden of the local ruler), stuff gets all wonky and I had a hard time following it. There’s a girl Zandra, and the two of them are transformed, but I don’t know if it was revealing something they had always been, or turned them into the ancient people of the story, or what. And there’s an alligator god and Ali becomes a pasha and the tables are turned on the storyteller and the old man. Or something.

It Was the Heat / Pat Cadigan

A horror story set in New Orleans. A 35 year old woman on her first business trip encounters a wild boy who leads her astray. Everything is too hot for her, but then the heat gets into her when she’s with the wild boy. Afterward the air conditioning bothers her and she craves the heat. She can’t go back to being who she was before, because the heat’s gotten into her.

The Cutter / Edward Bryant

A former Hollywood editor now owns a movie theater where he re-edits the movies he shows to make them better. Also, he pines for the local barfly/slut, who won’t give him the time of day because he’s older. But for some reason on her birthday she agree to meet him in his theater office, but unbeknownst to him, she is bringing along her current boyfriend. They start to have sex so that the theater owner will walk in on them, and he doesn’t like it when he does. He gets angry. But I don’t get the connection to his being a film editor, a cutter. It seemed tenuous at best.

Voices of the Kill, Thomas M. Disch

William Logan Pierce rents a cabin on Pine Kill Road for the summer. He’s a teacher, so he has the entire summer off. He intends to relax, and wade in the Pine Kill stream, and maybe do some hiking. But the Pine Kill begins to speak to him at night. Water nymphs. I thought this was a nice modern take on water spirits. This takes one of the tropes of high fantasy and places it in a modern context. It was kind of sweet and kind of creepy at the same time.

Secretly, Ruth Roston

Poem about giants. Eh.

The Devil’s Rose, Tanith Lee

Mikhal Mikhalson gets stuck in a small town in eastern Europe when snow blocks the railroads. While there, he becomes intrigued by the young lady Mardya Lindensouth, who he sees stealing away from a church. He begins a brief and torrid affair with the young Ms. Lindensouth who is just as intrigued by Mikhalson. This was a great story, though how it is horror I missed. Maybe there was some bewitching going on that I just missed.

Wempires, Daniel Pinkwater

Though this was first published in OMNI Magazine, I believe the text of this story is the same as that published in Wempires. Jonathan dresses up and pretends to be a vampire because he thinks they are cool. And then they visit and he learns what they are really like! This is an awesome story. If you find a copy of the illustrated book somewhere (it’s out of print), grab it to read to your kids.

Scatter My Ashes, Greg Egan

A photographer has a fascination with a serial child murderer, and it has dulled his sense of responsibility.

Unfinished Portrait of the King of Pain by Van Gogh, Ian McDonald

A re-imagining of Van Gogh’s madness from a fantasy perspective. I didn’t find this too engaging, except for the idea of how Van Gogh might have been able to cut off his ear. Rather than feeling pain, he’s been granted the gift of seeing color instead of pain. Bursts of wild colors, which he can then paint. Of course, there’s a drawback to feeling no pain.

Shoo Fly, Richard Matheson

Don’t let things get to you. Or find out the hard way like Roy Pressman as a fly in his office gets under his skin and he just has to kill it before he can do anything else.

The Thing Itself, Michael Blumlein

A love story about Laurie and Elliot. Elliot has cystic fibrosis, but he’s also visited by magical beings. Who don’t really do much.

The Soft Whisper of Midnight Snow, Charles de Lint

Tomi Douglas’s husband leaves her with no warning. She doesn’t adjust well to being alone. She starts seeing a figure watching her from the snow at her cabin in the woods. Until one day on her way home from town her Jeep skids off the road into a snowbank. Collapsing in the road while attempting to get home, her vision becomes real.

Roman Games, Anne Gay

Interesting tale of Sister Tom, on a train from the Vatican back to her home country of Ireland. She’s not exactly sure of the strength of her belief, and a dragon appears to take advantage of her weakness. Can Sister Tom save the imperiled mother? I’m ambivalent about this story. It’s well-written, but I’m already tired of the maybe it’s real, maybe it’s not theme to a lot of the stories so far.

The Princess, the Cat, and the Unicorn, Patricia C. Wrede

Children’s fantasy about a princess who sets off to seek her fortune, primarily because the king’s counselors think she’s not behaving like a proper princess. She’s accompanied by a cat, who turns out to be an enchanted prince. Love prevails. Blah blah blah. Thought this was boring.

The Book and Its Contents, Robert Kelly

Interesting, yet unfulfilling story about a country town doctor who is a little weird. He has (or is writing, I’m not really clear) a book that is all about language and words. And then the words come to life. Or something like that.

The Great God Pan, M. John Harrison

I’ve tried to read Things That Never Happen and Light based on China Miéville’s recommendation of M. John Harrison. Yeah, I just get lost. I didn’t get quite as lost with this story, but I am still in over my head. Something about something the characters did in the 1960s and now visions and demons are after them. Or something. I’m beginning to think that short form fantasy really isn’t my thing.

Lost Bodies, Ian Watson

While at their cottage in the country, four people come across a bodyless fox. Also, they play poker and it ends up getting naughty. Do these authors try to make their writing inscrutable on purpose?

Two Minutes Forty-Five Seconds, Dan Simmons

Roger Colvin works for a NASA subcontractor. He feels incredibly guilty because liked the prospect of a Vice President position in his company more than he liked his principles. So he approved changing the O-ring parameters for the space shuttle Challenger. Now a two minute forty-five second fall haunts him.

Preflash, John M. Ford

Because of trauma, Griffin has double vision. He can see normally, but he also see visions of people’s deaths in his left eye. Except for a few people like super-celebrity and singer Suzy Lodi.

Life of Buddha, Lucius Shepard

Feeling guilty over how his life led his mother to worry herself to death, and his wife to commit suicide, Richard Damon (a.k.a. Buddha) numbs himself into oblivion in a crack house in Detroit. His only real interaction is with Taboo, a pre-op transsexual with whom Buddha establishes a loose friendship. Taboo has the magical power to remove warts. Taboo also has the hots for Buddha, but he can ignore that because Taboo has drugs as well as wart-removal power. And then everything goes to hell. For once, I got the story. And even liked it!

Appointment with Eddie, Charles Beaumont

Shecky King is the biggest entertainer in the world, but until Eddie the barber decides he likes him well enough to give him an appointment, Shecky feels like he’s a failure.

Fragments of Papyrus from the Temple of the Older Gods, William Kotzwinkle

A dead Pharaoh finds himself on the wrong boat on his journey to the afterlife. See, Pharaohs are supposed to have their own golden craft. This one finds himself on the boat of his chief praiser. The praiser’s wife is a little ticked too; she didn’t appreciate being summarily tossed into the Pharaoh’s tomb on his death.

Spillage, Nancy Kress

A coachman is flung from a coach in an accident. I think he dies, but it’s hard for me to tell what the hell is going on. I’m getting pretty tired of this in these stories. Seriously, is it that hard to make it clear what the hell is going on in a fantasy story?

Snowman, Charles L. Grant

Harry helps a lost woman in Leicester Square during a snowstorm. Everything becomes quiet, people and the crowds disappear. The woman thinks she has died and she’s in the afterlife. But she’s not. Harry is hoping she’s the love of his life that he’s been waiting for.

The Scar, Dennis Etchison

A woman, her daughter, and a man walk the highway into a small town. But there’s something a little off about the man. A little too on edge. And then the busboy takes his plate and he goes just a little berserk. An okay story though by the standards of this anthology I love it.

Laiken Langstrand, Gwyneth Jones

The king of a destroyed land becomes obsessed with finding the last object that is part of his kingdom, a fishhook. He’s drawn to a beach where everything lost in the sea legendarily returns to be eventually found. He never finds his fishhook on the beach, but he strikes up a relationship with the girl in the next hut over. Turns out she’s a banished sea creature, the daughter of the sea serpent that destroyed his kingdom. Finally! A fantasy story that I thought was interesting and one that I could follow! Awesome!

The Last Poem about the Snow Queen and Pinocchio, Sandra M. Gilbert

Pinocchio, Sandra M. Gilbert

If I don’t get the obtuse fiction that comprises most of this anthology, I’m really not going to get poetry. I’m not against poetry. It’s just mostly over my head. In my collection of 1200+ (and growing) books, only two are of poetry. Just not my thing. So I’ll skip commenting on these two poems.

Game in the Pope’s Head, Gene Wolfe

Please re-read the comments I’ve made about several other stories and make like I made them about this story too.

Playing the Game, Ramsey Campbell

Loved this story! All sorts of dread induced! Hill is a newspaper reporter for a local newspaper in a washed up town. He gets information that a former carny (Matta) has set up as a healer in the run-down and nearly abandoned docks on the river, docks that boats can’t even reach anymore. Hill actually ran into Matta as a child, and came out of the experience worse for the wear. So he has a vendetta to expose Matta. His editor says Hill can’t do investigative work, so he heads out after work with the intention of selling the story elsewhere. But he knows Matta is up to something in the docks, drug smuggling perhaps. Of course, after work is after dark, and the alleyways between the abandoned warehouses are forbidding. He finds Matta though. Matta knows immediately that Hill is there to expose him, so Matta sends Hill on his way. On his way out, he can see Matta’s assistant giving him some kind of game to play. Just awesome! Campbell doesn’t tell you everything, but enough that I wasn’t confused as to what the hell was going on. Enough to follow the story, but not enough as well, so I got a good feeling of dread.

Faces, F. Paul Wilson

Though a bit heavy on the bad parents make monsters of children shtick, this is still a great story. Kevin Harrison is the detective working on the Facelift Killer case. Seven good looking young women are found, mutilated with their faces chewed off. Standing at the scene of the seventh killing, he feels someone watching him. He directs the other officers to search the rooftop where he felt he was watched from, where they find telltale traces of blood. Later in the early hours of the morning, the killer makes contact with Harrison at the police station, starting a short but brief dialog between the two.

Snowfall, Jessie Thompson

This story just makes me sad. Sad that there even has to be stories about child abuse.

Seal-Self, Sara Maitland

Maitland writes about a man who has to cross-dress as a woman in order to kill a baby seal to make a cloak for the lovely lass he fancies. Whoosht! That’s the sound of something going over my head. However, the story does have a great line worthy of repeating. She is taller than he is, and her legs run up under her skirt, legs so slender and long that they must lead somewhere good. That’s about all that’s good in the story.

No Hearts, No Flowers, Barry N. Malzberg

A half-crooked columnist for a newspaper makes a brief mention of an overheard conversation in a restaurant. Something about a Valentine’s Day Massacre, which takes place perpetrated by the local mob. The mob summons the reviewer to met with them, and he’s quaking in his boots thinking he’s gonna get offed for blowing their cover. A nice story, but it didn’t have that sense of dread a horror story should have.

The Boy Who Drew Unicorns, Jane Yolen

This is the story of a traumatized boy who is picked on in school. He doesn’t talk. He just draws unicorns. Of course, that’s that sort of different thing that other kids jump on like sharks to blood in the water. The kids doesn’t seem to mind it that much, mostly because he is in his own unicorn world. Sort of a children’s story, and I liked it.

The Darling, Scott Bradfield

The Darling is the story of a serial killer woman, who kills most of the men in her life, as well as possibly a few other people. I’d say it’s creepy more than horror-inducing, but it’s still a pretty good story. One thing that came to mind though is towards the ends when the doctor is treating Delores for her pathology and he takes a turn for the creepy, I didn’t mind so much. Perhaps it’s a bit of moral relativism at work in me.

Night They Missed the Horror Show, Joe R. Lansdale

The dedication at the beginning of this story reads: For Lew Shiner. A story that doesn’t flinch. For damn sure this story doesn’t flinch. Leonard and Farto are small town racist hicks. Even in a racist environment, they outdo their neighbors so much that no girl will look kindly on them, and so they begin the story alone in the 7-11 parking lot drinking whiskey. They are bored, but too racist to go to Night of the Living Dead at the drive-in because it stars a black man. Instead, they tie up a dead dog behind Leonard’s ’64 Impala and drive around drinking watching pieces of the dog fall off. Until they drive by a group of students from the rival high school beating on a black man on the side of the road. Not really wanting to help him, they do so because he plays quarterback on Leonard and Farto’s team, and he’s their nigger. So they help him, but things go from bad to worse both for Scott (the black quarterback) and then for Leonard and Farto. Lansdale’s story doesn’t flinch at all. For one, he has Leonard and Farto using epithets like nigger to show how grotesque they are. And his story doesn’t flinch from a very scary vision of racism that probably isn’t too far off from that experienced in some southern small towns in the 1960s.

Winter Solstice, Camelot Station, John M. Ford

This is a poem. I read the first stanza or so and realized it’s not one of those poems that I really get, so I just skipped the rest. It’s probably pretty good for those who are into this sort of thing.

The Boy Who Hooked The Sun, Gene Wolfe

A little fable. Very eh. Didn’t do anything for me.

Clem’s Dream, Joan Aiken

Not my thing. Tooth fairy accidentally steals a kid’s dream when she takes his tooth. So he quests to retrieve it with the help of other fairies.

Love in Vain, Lewis Shiner

This is a story about a serial killer. A troubled prosecutor is sent to trip up the killer, who has been confessing to pretty much every murder around. He carries a wholly made-up case file, and yet the killer still knows intimate details of the murder that only the killer could know despite it being a fiction. Just an awesome story. Also, Shiner has made the story available under a Creative Common license. I’m a big fan of Creative Commons, and the license allows anyone to put together or repost Love In Vain so long as they don’t charge for it, don’t change it, and credit Shiner. I’ve got a copy in case he ever pulls down his site, and I’ll post it in that case. But Shiner deserves some kudos for making his fiction available this way, so go read the story over at his site.

In the Darkened Hours, Bruce Boston

Poetry. I read this one though. Still no tingly feeling though.

A Golden Net for Silver Fishes, Ru Emerson

A woman’s child is stolen by a dryad, and in order to get the child back she has to collect fish for the dryad’s pond. If she ever fills the pond with fish, she can get her child back. Of course, the dryad eats the fish nearly as fast as the woman fills the pond. But the creatures of the forest have another plan to defeat the dryad and return the child. Will the woman follow their advice?

Dancing Among Ghosts, Jim Aikin

Terri Windling’s introduction to this story calls this her pick for the best fantasy story of the year. I think it’s one of the best in this book. It’s the story of Carla and Tony, two ad executives dating and by the end of the story planning to get married, and Carla’s friend Joann from college. Joann is a painter, and a little off her rocker. Her very last painting before she suicides by overdose is a ballroom scene, people among ghosts, dancing. Joann heard the ghosts and the music calling to her, even while she was painting the scene. And in one brief moment in Joann’s apartment just after she and Tony find Joann dead, she touches the painting and is drawn into the world of ghosts. Joann is there, not dead after all. Or perhaps she is dead in the real world as a way to prevent herself from returning. The rest of the story is about Carla hearing the music from the ball, and fighting being drawn back there, and at other times questioning her own sanity.

Title: The year’s best fantasy: second annual collection
Editors: Ellen Datlow, Terri Windling
Cover artist: Thomas Canty
Series: The year’s best fantasy and horror book 2
Imprint / publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Format: Paperback
Length: 579 p.
Publication date: 1989
ISBN-10: 0-312-03007X
Subject: Fantasy fiction — Periodicals
Subject: Horror tales — Periodicals
LC classification: PN6120.95.F25 Y4

As always, Gardner Dozois picks a great anthology.

The Jaguar Hunter, Lucius Shepard

This is more a tale of fantasy than science fiction. Estaban Caax agrees to hunt and kill a jaguar that terrorizes a section of jungle that a local developer wants to build. Estaban owes the developer money for his wife’s purchases. Only thing is the jaguar protects a gateway between this world and the world of the gods of Esteban’s tribe, a set of gods mostly forgotten. Soon, the gateway will not longer exist. Will Esteban kill the jaguar or will he defect to the other side?

Dogfight, Michael Swanwick and William Gibson

This is a cyberpunk story that illustrates why I’m mostly not a fan of cyberpunk. It’s a great story, about a young punk who gets into a sub-culture of people who dogfight with holographic airplanes. It’s not dissimilar to the culture of barroom pool players (to which this actually makes a reference or two). To advance, Deke tries to fob off a piece of wetware to an unsuspecting young girl, who turns out to be very suspecting and much more competent with wetware than anyone Deke has met. A short romance buds, but the girl has been trained with an aversion to being touched by her family, which wishes her to remain chaste until she’s finished school and got a job. Which is something that not many people do in that milieu. She’s about to get out of her aversion early by using a drug called hype to ace an interview. Only thing is Deke also wants her hit of the drug so he can duke it out with the local dogfight champion. It’s a good story. But it doesn’t need the cyberpunk veneer. Not in the least. Why make a standard story inaccessible to anyone who doesn’t want to wade through 300 made up terms describing some futuristic networked world? Sure, if the story needs it, I have no problem with the device. But this story doesn’t need it in the slightest.

Fermi and Frost, Frederik Pohl

Nice little short story about a nuclear war apocalypse.

Green Days in Brunei, Bruce Sterling

An interesting love story set in a future Luddite kingdom of Brunei, after oil is no longer king and technology has divided most of the world into haves and have -nots. In Brunei, technology is mostly underground, and so an economy built around kampongs, extended households, has grown up. An outside engineer hired to restart the country’s robotic-equipped factory falls in love with the crown princess and has to figure out what to do with his life.

Snow, John Crowley

If something could record your life, but you could only watch the records in random snippets, would that be any different from your own memory? John Crowley writes of just such a technology, where people can have a miniature bug record a few years of their lives as it follows them around. After death, your loved ones could view your life at your mausoleum.

The Fringe, Orson Scott Card

Card wrote a few stories about a post-apocalyptic civilization living in the Utah desert. This one centers around a palsied teacher who turns in a few of the community’s leading citizens for black market profiting. Living on the edge, such smuggling works to the detriment of all. Unfortunately, not everyone appreciates the teacher’s actions, least of all the children of the arrested men. They attempt to take revenge by leaving the teacher without his wheelchair in a wash just before a flash flood.

The Lake Was Full Of Artificial Things, Karen Joy Fowler

A women tries to reconcile her guilt about leaving her lover as he headed off to Viet Nam by undergoing a futuristic memory treatment that brings her memories of the man alive.

Sailing to Byzantium, Robert Silverberg

There are lots of stories out there that explore the meaning of what it is to be human. Famous among this is Isaac Asimov’s Robot series. Even such pop S.F. as the new Battlestar Galactica explores this theme. How can you tell the difference between a construct and real life? Is there any real difference? Silverberg’s Sailing to Byzantium explores it from the perspective of the construct that doesn’t yet know it is a construct.

Solstice, James Patrick Kelly

A man cloned himself as a woman so he can find love, but his clone has emotions of her own. Kinda flat, this one.

Duke Pasquale’s Ring, Avram Davidson

A Dr. Eszterhazy story. I read about ten pages and gave up. Too many characters without introduction for me. If you’ve read other stories in this series it might make more sense.

More Than the Sum of His Parts, Joe Haldeman

In some was this story was enjoyable and in others it wasn’t. The man goes mad due to technology theme is no different that The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells that I read over my Belize vacation. But for some reason the cyborg technology theme did draw me in. One thing that made that effective (where it wasn’t in The Invisible Man) was that you see the transformation from normal to power-mad. In Wells novel, the main character is mad prior to his introduction in the story.

Out Of All Them Bright Stars, Nancy Kress

Loved this little tale of prejudice against aliens. Little blue men come into your café. Kind of freaky looking. Would you want to serve them?

Side Effects, Walter Jon Williams

I’m not really sure this qualifies as science fiction. Doctor makes his money by over-enrolling his low-income patients in pharmaceutical trials and both he and the companies quietly (yet without much coordination) cover up the problems that ensue. The only thing science fiction ish about this is the side effect actually regresses someone in biological age. Dunno Williams’ intent when he wrote this, but given all the issues with drug trials in the last couple of years, this sort of thing could be happening now.

The Only Neat Thing To Do, James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon)

This story reminded me a lot of Robert A. Heinlein’s novels for youth written in the 1950s. Here, a young girl runs off solo to the stars because she wants to be on the cutting edge. She gets to be, meeting up in a first contact with an alien race. Yet, tragically, she is quite unprepared for what happens.

Dinner In Audoghast, Bruce Sterling

I did not get this story at all. Big huh?

Under Siege, George R. R. Martin

This is the story of a time traveller who is attempting to prevent World War 3 by preventing the Russians from taking over Sweden (or Finland, I’m not quite sure) prior to the Russian Revolution. No one is sure what will happen to him and his compatriots in the future should they succeed. He and several other time travellers are freaks bred for the job. And they cannot affect the past physically. Only by mentally nudging participants are they able to do anything, and their powers are feeble at best. Told both from the perspective of the time traveller and the host person he’s trying to influence.

Flying Saucer Rock & Roll, Howard Waldrop

During the 50s, two gangs from Michael Jackson’s Beat It video decide to settle their differences through a sing-off. Mysteriously, one of the boys disappears during strange power outages right at the end. Could it be aliens?

A Spanish Lesson, Lucius Shepard

A slacker hanging out on the Spanish riviera meets up with aliens from another dimension and helps them seal the rift between dimensions through which Adolf Hitler threatens to emerge. Then a bunch of pages where the slacker drags the mental husk of one of the aliens around the world to a Tibetan monastery. No point at all. Awful stuff.

Roadside Rescue, Pat Cadigan

A frustrated motorist waiting for A.A.A. to fix a flat (or the equivalent) is helped by an alien in a limo, only to find out the alien is using him. Nice at it’s length.

Paper Dragons, James P. Blaylock

Another one for the huh? category.

Magazine Section, R. A. Lafferty

A writer of Weekly World News type stories is canned and wonders what he’ll do with his life now and can’t decide which of the many fantastic stories he’s written he’ll retire to.

The War At Home, Lewis Shiner

Very odd story about a man having flashbacks to someone’s Viet Nam war experience. Luckily it was short so I didn’t have to really grok it before it was over. Liked it, but had it gone longer I would have gotten really confused.

Rockabye Baby, S. C. Sykes

Loved this little story, which takes the idea of starting all over again to extremes and does it well. Suppose you get the opportunity to start all over again, but you don’t get to know what you know now? Would you? How about if you’ve had a terrible tragedy that meant you had nothing pleasant left to live for in your current state?

Green Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson

I’ve read at least one of the Mars series, though I can’t remember which book it was I read. I remember not being particularly impressed. Green Mars, isn’t bad though. It’s the longest story in this anthology, but it consists mostly of a fairly non-genre account of mountain climbing. Sure, it’s Olympus Mons on Mars. Except for occasional monologuing by our main character on how he misses the mostly un-terraformed Mars of his 300 years ago youth, you wouldn’t know it wasn’t a normal ripped-from-the-headlines climbing story. Decent reading, once.

Title: The year’s best science fiction: third annual collection
Editor: Gardner Dozois
Series: The Year’s Best Science Fiction book 2
Publisher: Blue Jay Books
Format: Hardcover
Length: 621 p.
Publication date: 1986
ISBN-10: 0-312-94486-1
Subject: Science fiction, America
LC classification: PS648.S3 Y43 1986