{"id":13459,"date":"2021-01-29T16:42:53","date_gmt":"2021-01-29T16:42:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=13459"},"modified":"2021-01-30T16:09:00","modified_gmt":"2021-01-30T16:09:00","slug":"years-best-science-fiction-edited-by-david-g-hartwell-1996","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=13459","title":{"rendered":"Year’s Best Science Fiction, edited by David G. Hartwell, 1996"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Summary:
\nDavid Hartwell\u2019s \u2018Best of the Year\u2019 series gets off to a lacklustre start with a volume that contains nothing outstanding but which has two long stories by Robert Silverberg, Hot Times in Magma City<\/em>, and Gene Wolfe, Ziggurat<\/em> that, along with William Browning Spencer\u2019s Downloading Midnight<\/em>, manage to drag up the average. There are also a couple of good stories by Le Guin and Barton, but the rest are of average or worse quality. In particular, the stories by Zelazny, Benford and Sheckley are a lot weaker than you might expect from these writers.
\n[ISFDB page<\/a>][Amazon UK<\/a>\/US<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Other reviews:
\nGary K. Wolfe, Locus<\/em> #425, June 1996
\nVarious, Goodreads<\/a><\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Editor, David G. Hartwell<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nThink Like a Dinosaur<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 novelette by James Patrick Kelly \u2217<\/strong>
\nWonders of the Invisible World<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 short story by Patricia A. McKillip \u2217\u2217<\/strong>
\nHot Times in Magma City<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 novella by Robert Silverberg \u2217\u2217\u2217<\/strong>+
\nGossamer <\/strong><\/em>\u2022 short story by Stephen Baxter \u2217\u2217<\/strong>
\nA Worm in the Well <\/strong><\/em>\u2022 novelette by Gregory Benford \u2217<\/strong>
\nDownloading Midnight<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 novelette by William Browning Spencer \u2217\u2217\u2217<\/strong>+
\nFor White Hill<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 novella by Joe Haldeman \u2217\u2217<\/strong>
\nIn Saturn Time<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 short story by William Barton \u2217\u2217\u2217<\/strong>
\nComing of Age in Karhide<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 novelette by Ursula K. Le Guin \u2217\u2217\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Three Descents of Jeremy Baker<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 short story by Roger Zelazny \u2217\u2217<\/strong>
\nEvolution <\/strong><\/em>\u2022 novelette by Nancy Kress \u2217\u2217<\/strong>+
\nThe Day the Aliens Came<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 short story by Robert Sheckley –
\nMicrobe <\/strong><\/em>\u2022 short story by Joan Slonczewski \u2217\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Ziggurat<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 novella by Gene Wolfe \u2217\u2217\u2217<\/strong>+<\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nIntroduction: Science Fiction Is Alive and Well<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 essay by David G. Hartwell
\nStory introductions<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 by David G. Hartwell<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

(All the stories below have previously been published on my sfshortstories.com blog\u2014if you have read them there, skim down to the three dots to get the summary and other information.)<\/p>\n

This anthology leads off with Think Like A Dinosaur<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by James Patrick Kelly (Asimov’s SF<\/em>, June 1995), which begins with the return of Kamala Shastri to Tuulen station, a matter transmitter installation in lunar orbit, after three years on the alien planet Gend. The story then flashes back to the period when she first arrived on the station to go outbound.
\nIn a data dump start (you are pelted with information in the first few pages, which is not unusual for a Gardner Dozois\u2019 Asimov\u2019s SF <\/em>story) the narrator Michael meets her on her initial arrival at the station, and we get a stream of detail about both her, the space station, and the future they inhabit. The one essential piece of information is that humanity now has limited access to the Galaxy courtesy of the Hanen, an alien race of dinosaur-like creatures who operate the station\u2019s matter transmitter.
\nHowever, before Kamala can make her \u201csuperluminal transmission\u201d (matter transmission jump) to Gend, one of the \u201cdinos\u201d called Silloin tells them that there will be a short delay because of technical problems. Michael decides to distract Kamala by launching into a \u201cTell me a secret . . .\u201d routine with her that results in further data dumps that provide details of both their childhoods: he tells her about the time he swapped the crosses on the graves of two of his teachers who died in an accident (later switching then back), then Kamala starts telling him a story about an old lady she visited when she was a child, before being interrupted by Silloin, who informs them that the matter transmitter is now serviceable.
\nIn the main part of the story we then discover, as Kamala is getting ready for the transfer, that the matter transmitter works by copying bodies and duplicating them at the destination station. However, to satisfy a nebulously explained concept of balance and \u201charmony,\u201d the original bodies have to be destroyed. And that is Michael\u2019s main purpose on the station\u2014to press the button that will destroy Kamala\u2019s original body after her duplicate is created on Gend (I can\u2019t remember if there is a reason why this can\u2019t be done automatically, or by the dinos).
\nOf course (spoiler) there is the inevitable problem, and Michael retrieves a screaming Kamala from the sending booth after what seems like an unsuccessful transmission\u2014it is apparent that the process is a highly traumatic event for the original\u2014only for Silloin to later find that the duplication process at Gend has been successful. This means there are now two copies of Kamala in the universe.
\nThe dinos subsequently get in a flap about the conservation of harmony, etc., eventually threatening Michael with Earth\u2019s expulsion from the transmission network if he doesn\u2019t destroy the original Kamala. After some to-ing and fro-ing (during which the dinos reproach Michael for his \u201cbaby\u201d thinking, and look like they may kill Kamala themselves), Michael forces Kamala into an airlock, and spaces her in a graphic scene:<\/p>\n

I heard the whoosh of escaping air and thought that was it; the body had been ejected into space. I had actually turned away when thumping started, frantic, like the beat of a racing heart. She must have found something to hold onto. Thump, thump, thump! It was too much. I sagged against the inner door\u2014thump, thump\u2014slid down it, laughing. Turns out that if you empty the lungs, it is possible to survive exposure to space for at least a minute, maybe two. I thought it was funny. Thump! Hilarious, actually. I had tried my best for her\u2014risked my career\u2014and this was how she repaid me? As I laid my cheek against the door, the thumps started to weaken. There were just a few centimeters between us, the difference between life and death. Now she knew all about balancing the equation. I was laughing so hard I could scarcely breathe. Just like the meat behind the door. Die already, you weepy bitch.
\nI don’t know how long it took. The thumping slowed. Stopped. And then I was a hero. I had preserved harmony, kept our link to the stars open. I chuckled with pride; I could think like a dinosaur.\u00a0 p. 25-26<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This last section obviously makes this story one that references Tom Godwin\u2019s The Cold Equations<\/em> (that\u2019s if you define \u201creferences\u201d as \u201cconduct an ill-informed and partisan attack\u201d).1<\/sup> If this isn\u2019t about the Godwin story, then what we are left with is misogynistic torture porn.
\nEven before this attempted takedown of the Godwin I didn\u2019t much care for this piece. I\u2019ve already mentioned the data dump start\u2014who wants to hack their way through that when they start a story?\u2014and the \u201cTell me a story\u201d digressions\u2014although I think I can see the need for these to pad the piece out (that said, you would think these might contribute something tangible to the story, e.g. Kamala could do with being a more sympathetic character).
\nThe story has other problems too, including the Dino\u2019s nebulous and hand-wavey comments about \u201charmony\u201d and \u201cbalance,\u201d which set up an unconvincing Trolley Problem (kill Kamala or something worse might happen). There are also science explanations that would shame a 1930\u2019s pulp:<\/p>\n

Whatever went wrong with Kamala’s migration that morning, there was nothing J could have done. The dinos tell me that the quantum nondemoliton sensor array is able to circumvent Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle by measuring spacetime\u2019s most crogglingly small quantities without collapsing the wave\/particle duality. How small? They say that no one can ever \u201csee\u201d anything that’s only 1.62 x 10-31<\/sup> centimeters long, because at that size, space and time come apart. Time ceases to exist and space becomes a random probablistic foam, sort of like quantum spit. We humans call this the Planck-Wheeler length. There\u2019s a Planck-Wheeler time, too: 10-45<\/sup> of a second. If something happens and something else happens and the two events are separated by an interval of a mere 10-45<\/sup> of a second, it is impossible to say which came first. It was all dino to me\u2014and that’s just the scanning. The Hanen use different tech to create artificial wormholes, hold them open with electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations, pass the superluminal signal through and then assemble the migrator from elementary particles at the destination.\u00a0 p. 15-16<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thank you, Professor\u2014do you have any equations to go with that?
\nI thought this a poorly put together piece, and was later horrified to find that (a) not only everyone else on my group read raved about it2<\/sup> but (b) that it won a Hugo award too (and was a Nebula finalist). It seems that all you need to do to woo voters is produce a story with space stations, dinosaurs, and self-referential genre content.
\n\u2217<\/strong> (Mediocre). 7,800 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Wonders of the Invisible World<\/strong><\/em> by Patricia A. McKillip (Full Spectrum #5<\/em>, 1995) begins arrestingly with a \u201cangel\u201d (a time-traveller) visiting a man called Mather:<\/p>\n

I am the angel sent to Cotton Mather. It took me some time to get his attention. He lay on the floor with his eyes closed; he prayed fervently, sometimes murmuring, sometimes shouting. Apparently the household was used to it. I heard footsteps pass his study door; a woman\u2014his wife Abigail?\u2014called to someone: \u201cIf your throat is no better tomorrow, we\u2019ll have Phillip pee in a cup for you to gargle.\u201d From the way the house smelled, Phillip didn\u2019t bother much with cups.\u00a0 p. 30 (Best Science Fiction of the Year<\/em>, David Hartwell)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The angel records Mather\u2019s comments for the researcher she works for before returning to her own cyberpunk future, and her child. There she contemplates the dreadful past she has returned from, and agonises about the fact that she didn\u2019t change anything for the better (although her employer reminds her that if she did she would have been left there). When she watches her kid play a VR game later on, she sees the image of a trapped angel.
\nThis gets off to a good start but doesn’t subsequently go anywhere. A notion, not a story.
\n\u2217\u2217<\/strong> (Average). 3,850 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Hot Times in Magma City<\/strong><\/em> by Robert Silverberg (Omni Online<\/em>, May 1995) starts in a Los Angeles recovery house where an ex-addict, Mattison, is monitoring a screen for volcanoes and lava outbreaks in the local area:<\/p>\n

The whole idea of the Citizens Service House is that they are occupied by troubled citizens who have \u201cvolunteered\u201d to do community service\u2014any sort of service that may be required of them. A Citizens Service House is not quite a jail and not quite a recovery center, but it partakes of certain qualities of both institutions, and its inhabitants are people who have fucked up in one way or another and done injury not only to themselves but to their fellow citizens, injury for which they can make restitution by performing community service even while they are getting their screwed-up heads gradually screwed on the right way.
\nWhat had started out to involve a lot of trash-collecting along freeways, tree-pruning in the public parks, and similar necessary but essentially simple and non-life-threatening chores, has become a lot trickier ever since this volcano thing happened to Los Angeles. The volcano thing has accelerated all sorts of legal and social changes in the area, because flowing lava simply will not wait for the usual bullshit California legal processes to take their course.\u00a0 p. 51<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When there is a particularly serious eruption, Mattison\u2019s team is sent by Volcano Central to support the local lava control teams in Pasadena. En route we get a description of this near-future LA:<\/p>\n

The rains have made everything green, though. The hills are pure emerald, except where some humongous bougainvillea vine is setting off a gigantic blast of purple or orange. Because the prevailing winds this time of year blow from west to east, there\u2019s no coating of volcanic ash or other pyroclastic crap to be seen in this part of town, nor can you smell any of the noxious gases that the million fumaroles of the Zone are putting forth; all such garbage gets carried the other way, turning the world black and nauseating from San Gabriel out to San Berdoo and Riverside.
\nWhat you can see, though, is the distant plume of smoke that rises from the summit of Mount Pomona, which is what the main cone seems to have been named. The mountain itself, which straddles two freeways, obliterating both and a good deal more besides, in a little place called City of Industry just southwest of Pomona proper, isn\u2019t visible, not from here\u2014it\u2019s only a couple of thousand feet high, after six months of building itself up out of its own accumulation of ejected debris. But the column of steam and fine ash that emerges from it is maybe five times higher than that, and can be seen far and wide all over the Basin, except perhaps in West L.A. and Santa Monica, where none of this can be seen or smelled and all they know of the whole volcano thing, probably, is what they read in the Times or see on the television news. \u00a0p. 58<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After the team successfully complete their task (which, basically, involves hosing down the lava flow so it forms a crust that dams what is behind it) they get sent to another job\u2014but not until they demand, and get, a break:<\/p>\n

Lunch is sandwiches and soft drinks, half a block back from the event site. They get out of their suits, leaving them standing open in the street like discarded skins, and eat sitting down at the edge of the curb. \u201cI sure wouldn\u2019t mind a beer right now,\u201d Evans says, and Hawks says, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you wish up a bottle of fucking champagne, while you\u2019re wishing things up? Don\u2019t cost no more than beer, if it\u2019s just wishes.\u201d
\n\u201cI never liked champagne,\u201d Paul Foust says. \u201cFor me it was always cognac. Cour-voy-zee-ay, that was for me.\u201d He smacks his lips. \u201cI can practically taste it now. That terrific grapey taste hitting your tongue that smooth flow, right down your gullet to your gut\u2014\u201d
\n\u201cKnock it off,\u201d says Mattison. This nitwit chatter is stirring things inside him that he would prefer not to have stirred.
\n\u201cYou never stop wanting it,\u201d Foust tells him.
\n\u201cYes. Yes, I know that, you dumb fucker. Don\u2019t you think I know that? Knock it off.\u201d
\n\u201cCan we talk about smoking stuff, then?\u201d Marty Cobos asks.
\n\u201cAnd how about needles, too?\u201d says Mary Maude Gulliver, who used to sell herself on Hollywood Boulevard to keep herself in nose candy. \u201cLet\u2019s talk about needles too.\u201d
\n\u201cShut your fucking mouth, you goddamn whore,\u201d Lenny Prochaska says. He pronounces it hooer<\/em>. \u201cWhat do you need to play around with my head for?\u201d
\n\u201cWhy, did you have some kind of habit?\u201d Mary Maude asks him sweetly.\u00a0 p. 71<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

En route to the second job we see more scenes of volcanic Armageddon and, at one point, the crew pass something that looks like an Aztec sacrifice taking place at an intersection. Finally, at the second job (spoiler), there is a climactic scene that involves a moment of peril for one of this dysfunctional crew, and a chance of redemption for another.
\nThis is a very readable and entertaining story, with a neat idea (albeit not an especially SFnal one) as well as characters that are both colourful and snarky. It\u2019s a pretty good piece, and one I\u2019d have for my \u201cYear\u2019s Best,\u201d too. That said, the story feels like it is a bit longer than it needs to be (perhaps because of the vulcanology material, some of which feels like it comes straight from a very interesting holiday in Iceland), and the characters of the addicts are a bit too similar.
\nI note in passing that this doesn\u2019t read like a Silverberg\u2019s work at all, and felt more like one of those Marc Laidlaw & Rudy Rucker stories I\u2019ve read recently.
\n\u2217\u2217\u2217<\/strong>+ (Good to Very Good). 20,100 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Gossamer <\/strong><\/em>by Stephen Baxter (Science Fiction Age<\/em>, November 1995) has a good opening hook that sees a two woman spaceship prematurely come out of a wormhole near Pluto and crash-land on the planet. During their approach, Lvov, the scientist of the two, has a brief (and story telegraphing) vision of a web between Pluto and one of its moons, Charon.
\nBoth of the women survive the crash although the ship is wrecked, and Cobh the pilot tells Lvov that it\u2019ll be twenty days or so before they are rescued, and that it won\u2019t be via the wormhole (there is some handwavium here about the wormhole anomaly that spat them out of hyperspace).
\nThe central section of the story then sees Lvov exploring the surface of Pluto and, as she flies along, we get some personal backstory. There is also further discussion between the pair (Cobh is off doing something else) about the unstable wormhole. Then Lvov finds what looks like eggs in a burrow:<\/p>\n

Everywhere she found the inert bodies of snowflakes, or evidence of their presence: eggs, lidded burrows. She found no other life forms\u2014or, more likely, she told herself, she wasn\u2019t equipped to recognize any others.
\nShe was drawn back to Christy, the sub-Charon point, where the topography was at its most complex and interesting, and where the greatest density of flakes was to be found. It was as if, she thought, the flakes had gathered here, yearning for the huge, inaccessible moon above them. But what could the flakes possible want of Charon? What did it mean for them? \u00a0p. 129<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When the pair realise that they may have discovered alien life there is a discussion about what they should do\u2014if they signal Earth then the rescue will be called off as any rocket exhaust will damage the environment. Lvov (spoiler) feels strongly that if they have to die to preserve the Plutonian ecosystem then so be it and, when she realises that Cobh has figured out another way to get them home, she sends a message to Earth about her discovery.
\nThe final part of the story has the pair going to the wormhole on Cobh\u2019s salvaged and modified GUTdrive, the (presumably not ecosystem destroying) heat of which activates the Pluto-Charon ecosystem: the burrows open, the eggs hatch, and an interplanetary web forms between Pluto and its moon. Then the drive activates, and causes a distorted space wave which flicks the pair to Earth (or something like that).
\nThis is a well enough put together story (apart from the telegraphing, which is repeated again later on), and it has a good sense-of-wonder finale\u2014the problem is, though, that the piece as a whole does not convince. Part of the reason is the exotic ecosystem, which is interesting but rather far-fetched, and the other thing is Cobh\u2019s rather unlikely invention of a new type of space drive amid the wreckage of their ship (this rather smacks of Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers<\/em>, and cobbling together a star-drive out of a six-pack of used beer cans). There is also the minor problem (in practical if not narrative terms) of being trapped in your suit for twenty odd days, with no discussion of how you are going to eat or go to the toilet.
\nNormally, you can get away with one fantastic thing in a story; two or three is pushing it. Too far-fetched.
\n\u2217\u2217<\/strong> (Average.) 6,100 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

A Worm in the Well <\/strong><\/em>by Gregory Benford (Analog<\/em>, November 1995) starts\u2014not entirely clearly\u2014with a female astronaut called Claire piloting her spaceship near the Sun\u2019s corona in an attempt to survey a transiting black hole. The story then flashbacks to Mercury where a high-tech bailiff serves her, and we get back story about her debts, the imminent repossession of her specially outfitted ore-carrying spaceship, etc. All of which eventually leads her to accept a contract from SolWatch to undertake the hazardous job outlined in the first section.
\nThis set up forms the first third of the story, and the rest of the piece continues in a similarly plodding vein:<\/p>\n

Using her high-speed feed, Erma explained. Claire listened, barely keeping up. In the fifteen billion years since the wormhole was born, odds were that one end of the worm ate more matter than the other. If one end got stuck inside a star, it swallowed huge masses. Locally, it got more massive.
\nBut the matter that poured through the mass-gaining end spewed out the other end. Locally, that looked as though the mass-spewing one was losing mass. Space-time around it curved oppositely than it did around the end that swallowed.
\n\u201cSo it looks like a negative mass?\u201d
\nIT MUST. THUS IT REPULSES MATTER. JUST AS THE OTHER END ACTS LIKE A POSITIVE, ORDINARY MASS AND ATTRACTS MATTER.
\n\u201cWhy didn\u2019t it shoot out from the Sun, then?\u201d
\nIT WOULD, AND BE LOST IN INTERSTELLAR SPACE. BUT THE MAGNETIC ARCH HOLDS IT.
\n\u201cHow come we know it\u2019s got negative mass? All I saw was\u2014\u201d
\nErma popped an image into the wall screen.
\nNEGATIVE MASS ACTS AS A DIVERGING LENS, FOR LIGHT PASSING NEARBY. THAT WAS WHY IT APPEARED TO SHRINK AS WE FLEW OVER IT.
\nOrdinary matter focused light, Claire knew, like a converging lens. In a glance she saw that a negative ended wormhole refracted light oppositely. Incoming beams were shoved aside, leaving a dark tunnel downstream. They had flown across that tunnel, swooping down into it so that the apparent size of the wormhole got smaller.\u00a0 p. 150<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The extensive explanations in this piece (there is an accompanying diagram) caused my eyes to glaze over, and the unengaging dramas that Claire is subjected to did not provide any relief. The ship AI is also mildly irritating, as well as possibly homicidal\u2014at one point Claire asks about the peak gravity on an approach, whereupon the AI tells her \u201c27.6 gravities\u201d\u2014death for a human. You would have thought that it might have said so earlier, or perhaps it takes a relaxed view of Asimov\u2019s First Law (the part about not letting humans come to harm through inaction).
\nIn the final pages of the story (spoiler) she manages to capture the black hole and sell the rights for a huge amount of money, more than enough to clear her debts.
\nIn some respects this is a typical dull Analog<\/em> story, with lots of speculative science substituting for anything of interest.
\n\u2217<\/strong> (Mediocre). 8,300 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Downloading Midnight<\/strong><\/em> by William Browning Spencer (Tomorrow Speculative Fiction<\/em>, December 1995) is a noir detective\/cyberpunk mashup that starts with Captain Armageddon, a hologram from a virtual reality show called American Midnight<\/em>, going amok on the \u201cHighway\u201d. Initially Marty, the narrator, hires a young hacker called Bloom to go in and delete the \u201cghosts\u201d but several days pass and nothing happens. This leads him to go and check on Bloom, who he finds floating in a tank and wired up to VR. Marty\u2019s subsequent exchange with the VR technician supervising Bloom gives a taste of the strangeness of this future world and the wit of the story:<\/p>\n

Techs always tell you everything is under control. That\u2019s what this one said.
\n\u201cSave it for a gawker\u2019s tour,\u201d I told her. \u201cI\u2019ve been doing maintenance for fourteen years now. I know how it goes. You\u2019re fine, and then you\u2019re dead.\u201d
\n\u201cThis is poor personal interaction,\u201d the tech said. \u201cYou are questioning my professional skills and consequently devaluing my self-image.\u201d
\nI shrugged. Facts are facts: in over eighty percent of the cases where neural trauma shows on a monitor, the floater is already too blasted to make it back alive.
\nI thanked the tech and apologized if I had offended her or caused an esteem devaluation. She accepted my apology, but with a coolness that told me I\u2019d have another civility demerit in my file.\u00a0 p. 173<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Later Marty has an unsuccessful date with Gloria, an event that shows us another aspect of this strange future world (his relationship is subject to a tangle of restrictive contracts and conditions which, presumably, satirise what actually goes on in real life). After this he goes into the VR Highway to find Bloom, buying information from a tout in the under-Highway which eventually leads him to Bloom, who he finds talking to a woman in a bar in a seedy part of the Bin:<\/p>\n

The woman looked at me. She was a guy named Jim Havana, a gossip leak for the Harmonium tabloids. Havana always projected a woman on the Highway. In the Big R he was a bald suit, a white, dead-fish kind of guy with a sickly sheen of excess fat and sweat. Down here, Havana was a stocky fem\u2014you might have guessed trans\u2014with dated cosmetics and a big thicket of black hair. She was an improvement, but only by comparison to the upside version.
\n\u201cThis is wonderful,\u201d Havana said, glaring at Bloom. \u201cI said private, remember?
\n\u201cIt\u2019s good to see you,\u201d Bloom said to me.
\n\u201cDon\u2019t let me interfere with this reunion. I\u2019m out of here,\u201d Havana said. \u201cI don\u2019t need a crowd right now, you know?\u201d Havana shook her curls and stood up. She headed toward the door.
\n\u201cWait,\u201d Bloom said. He got up and ran after her.
\nI followed.
\nThe street was wet and low-res, every highlight skewed. The shimmering asphalt buckled as I ran. An odor like oily, burning rags lingered in the V. Bloom and Havana were ahead of me, both moving fast.
\nI heard Havana scream.
\nSomething detached from the shadows, rising wildly from an unthought alley full of cast-off formulae, dirty bulletin skreeds, trashed fantasies. An angry clot of flies hovered over the form. It roared\u2014the famous roar of Defiance, rallying cry of Captain Armageddon!\u00a0 pp. 178-179<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bloom fires an encrypted burst that destroys the creature, but we later find that this doesn\u2019t fix the Highway\u2019s problems. The rest of the story sees further adventures that eventually (spoiler) lead to Captain Armageddon\u2019s sidekick and sex star, Zera Terminal; Bloom\u2019s subsequent relationship with her; and how the source for her character (the human that was \u201cmapped\u201d as a starting point) was \u201craped\u201d. This latter event refers, I think (this is the story\u2019s weakest point), to the illegal mapping of a nine year old child as the source for Zera Terminal:<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve seen her, those big eyes and the fullness of her mouth. Her features are almost too lush for the chiseled oval of her face, but somehow it works, probably because of the innocence. This is a woman, you think, who trusts. This is a woman who finds everything new and good.
\nThere is usually some chill to a holo, some glint of the non-human intelligence that runs the programs. Zera almost transcended that. There was a human here, lodged in that sweet, surprised voice, that gawky grace, that wow in her eyes.
\nIt came down to a single quality, always rare, rarer in a land of artifice: Innocence<\/em>.\u00a0 p. 187<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is quite a convoluted (and at times dark) story, and it is occasionally hard to work out what is going on (it would have benefited from another draft). On the other hand it is engrossing, and convincingly depicts both of its colourful worlds, the real and the virtual. This latter effect is partly achieved by a skilful use of altered social customs, and also by an extensive invented vocabulary (\u201cHighway,\u201d \u201cBig R,\u201d \u201cgo flat,\u201d etc.), none of which the author explains to the readers but leaves to be understood from context or repeated use.
\nI\u2019m not sure it\u2019s an entirely successful story, but its mix of ambition and what it does achieve makes it my second favourite story in the Hartwell volume so far.
\n\u2217\u2217\u2217<\/strong>+ (Good to Very Good). 9,000 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

For White Hill<\/strong><\/em> by Joe Haldeman (Far Futures<\/em>, edited by Gregory Benford, 1995) opens with the (unnamed) narrator stating that he is writing this memoir in English, a language from \u201can ancient land of Earth.\u201d In the story\u2019s leisurely opening chapters we find that he and a woman called White Hill are part of a group of twenty-nine artists that has gone to Earth to take part in a competition to design and build a commemorative artwork that will serve as a reminder, after the Earth is reterraformed, of the devastation caused by the Fwyndri. This alien race, with whom humanity are still at war, released a nanoplague on Earth which turned most plant and animal DNA into dust.
\nAll this background information is given in little snippets though, and initially the story is mainly concerned with the developing relationship between the two characters, their sexual attraction, and the differing sexual mores of their two cultures (although, to be honest, they seem pretty much like an ordinary 20th<\/sup> Century couple2<\/sup>). There is also quite a lot of discussion about art as they wander around their base in Amazonia (and this is the kind of thing you would find in endless 1970\u2019s artist colony stories):<\/p>\n

She scraped at the edge of the sill with a piece of rubble. \u201cIt\u2019s funny: earth, air, fire, and water. You\u2019re earth and fire, and I\u2019m the other two.\u201d
\nI have used water, of course. The Gaudi is framed by water. But it was an interesting observation. \u201cWhat do you do, I mean for a living? Is it related to your water and air?\u201d
\n\u201cNo. Except insofar as everything is related.\u201d There are no artists on Seldene, in the sense of doing it for a living. Everybody indulges in some sort of art or music, as part of \u201cwholeness,\u201d but a person who only did art would be considered a parasite. I was not comfortable there. She faced me, leaning. \u201cI work at the Northport Mental Health Center. Cognitive science, a combination of research and . . . is there a word here? Jaturnary. \u2018Empathetic therapy,\u2019 I guess.\u201d\u00a0 p. 215 (Year\u2019s Best SF<\/em>, edited by David Hartwell)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

White Hill\u2019s occupation surfaces again at the end of the story.
\nAfter a couple chapters of these two mostly just talking to each other, the story finally gets going when they get a visitor who helps them plan their travel itinerary, at which point the story changes from an extended conversation into a travelogue. They go to Giza and the pyramids, and then by airship to Rome (which is now encircled by a wall of bones collected by the local monks). Then they learn they have to go back to Amazonia because \u201cthe war is back.\u201d
\nAt this point the story changes direction completely, and the pair return to discover that the Fwyndri have tampered with the sun\u2019s internal processes and that it will become progressively hotter\u2014eventually turning into a red giant. Earth will become increasingly uninhabitable and, when the sun finally expands, destroyed. The couple also learn that there is no way off-planet as all ships have been requisitioned (and ships from elsewhere will take too long to arrive). The pair decide to stay in Amazonia and continue with their work. They eventually sleep together.
\nThe rest of the story charts their developing relationship and their projects. While they work on these latter, terraforming machines cool the Earth so much that snow ends up covering what was originally a desert. Then, when they are caught in one of the storms that frequently occur, White Hill is badly injured\u2014she loses and eye and suffers serious facial injuries\u2014and the narrator has to tend to her until she heals enough to undertake a \u201cpurge\u201d and re-enter the safe underground areas for surgery.
\nAfter a couple more chapters about her recovery and their relationship, there is another right angle plot turn, which has him come back to find she has left to do \u201cJaturnary\u201d work for a hundred people who are going off in a spaceship to cold sleep through the expansion of the sun. There is a place for him, but he knows that the therapy she will provide to keep the cold-sleepers sane will eradicate her personality (no, me neither), so he does not go.
\nIf this synopsis seems all over the place, it is because the story is little more than a collection of deus ex machina plot developments (which are there because, I believe, the story is handily based on Shakespeare\u2019s 18th<\/sup> sonnet3<\/sup>). There is also a considerable amount of flab here (there is endless chatter about the couple\u2019s relationship), and a kitchen sink full of SF furniture (aliens, nano-plagues, exploding suns, cold-sleep, etc.) All in all, it struck me as very much the kind of story you would expect to see in a collection edited by another writer (which it was) and where, I suspect, the brief was, \u201cwrite what you want!\u201d
\nThere are parts of this that are readable enough, but it is a mess, and average at best.
\n\u2217\u2217<\/strong> (Average). 16,600 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

In Saturn Time<\/strong><\/em> by William Barton (Amazing Stories: The Anthology<\/em>, edited by Kim Mohan, 1995) is set in an alternate world where there was an extended Apollo program. The story starts with the narrator, Nick Jensen, and his commander on a 1974 Apollo 21 rover mission beyond the lunar daylight terminator line. In a dark crater they find hard white rock (frozen water?) under a thin film of black matter.
\nThe rest of the story telescopes forward at roughly four year intervals, and each time deploys an event vignette: Jensen is in orbit with the 1977 Apollo 29 when the Russians land on the Moon; in 1980 he is with President Udall, Vice President Mondale, and California Governor (and the next Democratic President after Udall) Jerry Brown, watching an (enhanced ) Saturn 5M lifting a moon base station; then, in 1984, he is on a mission taking a seventy-year-old Walter Cronkite to the Moon:<\/p>\n

And, sitting there on the pad, just as T minus thirty seconds was called, [Cronkite had] chuckled softly and said, \u201cThis kinda reminds me of Paris . . .\u201d
\nUh. Paris.
\n\u201cSure. I went in with the Airborne. Jumped with them, carrying a goddamn typewriter . . .\u201d
\nThen, sitting on the Extended LM\u2019s floor, as required, face far below the level of the window while the engine rumbled and we dropped toward touchdown, he\u2019d whipped out a kid\u2019s folding cardboard periscope, the kind of thing you could still buy for 98 cents, holding it up so he could see out. That won us over, a kind of guileless astronautical ingenuity, like smuggling a ham sandwich onto the first space flight.\u00a0 p. 273<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are various other events: Jensen is the first man on Mars; a partly reusable Saturn 5R is launched; Jupiter\u2019s moon Callisto is orbited, etc.
\nThis is a well enough done piece but it\u2019s really just a techo- fantasy for thwarted space geeks, and one that exists in a world that is completely devoid of any sense of realpolitik (there is no explanation as to why the voters would happily spend the colossal amount of money needed to fund an Apollo program on steroids, and the piece also posits the election of four Democratic Presidents succession).
\nFor dreamers.
\n\u2217\u2217\u2217<\/strong> (Good). 5900 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Coming of Age in Karhide<\/strong><\/em> by Ursula K. Le Guin (New Legends<\/em>, edited by Greg Bear & Martin H. Greenberg, 1995) is one of her \u2018Hainish\u2019 stories, the most famous example of which is The Left Hand of Darkness<\/em>. This story also takes place on the world of Gethen, a.k.a Winter, and, after some accomplished and elegant scene setting, the piece soon becomes a coming-of-age story about of one of the children of this planet, Sov Thade Tage em Ereb. Because Sov is an androgynous Gethenian, the process of growing up involves, in part, a fascination with the concept of \u201ckemmer,\u201d the periods after adolescence when Gethenians change into males or females to reproduce:<\/p>\n

No, I hadn\u2019t thought much about kemmer before. What would be the use? Until we come of age we have no gender and no sexuality, our hormones don\u2019t give us any trouble at all. And in a city Hearth we never see adults in kemmer. They kiss and go. Where\u2019s Maba? In the kemmerhouse, love, now eat your porridge. When\u2019s Maba coming back? Soon, love. And in a couple of days Maba comes back, looking sleepy and shiny and refreshed and exhausted. Is it like having a bath, Maba? Yes, a bit, love, and what have you been up to while I was away?\u00a0 p. 290<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Eventually Sov ages enough to show the first signs of kemmer, which involves temporary physical changes and some discomfort, something Sov later discusses with a friend called Sether, who is going through the same thing:<\/p>\n

We did not look at each other. Very gradually, unnoticeably, I was slowing my pace till we were going along side by side at an easy walk.
\n\u201cSometimes do you feel like your tits are on fire?\u201d I asked without knowing that I was going to say anything.
\nSether nodded.
\nAfter a while, Sether said, \u201cListen, does your pisser get. . . .\u201d
\nI nodded.
\n\u201cIt must be what the Aliens look like,\u201d Sether said with revulsion. \u201cThis, this thing sticking out, it gets so big . . . it gets in the way.\u201d
\nWe exchanged and compared symptoms for a mile or so. It was a relief to talk about it, to find company in misery, but it was also frightening to hear our misery confirmed by the other. Sether burst out, \u201cI\u2019ll tell you what I hate, what I really hate about it\u2014it\u2019s dehumanizing. To get jerked around like that by your own body, to lose control, I can\u2019t stand the idea. Of being just a sex machine. And everybody just turns into something to have sex with. You know that people in kemmer go crazy and die if there isn\u2019t anybody else in kemmer? That they\u2019ll even attack people in somer? Their own mothers?\u201d
\n\u201cThey can\u2019t,\u201d I said, shocked.
\n\u201cYes they can.\u201d\u00a0 p. 295<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After a brief visit to the Fastness, which appears to be some spiritual seat of higher learning (and where Sov learns how to \u201cuntrance\u201d and sing), the remainder of the story follows Sov\u2019s first visit to the kemmerhouse. We see how the Gethenian sexual change is triggered (Sov becomes a female after being exposed to the male pheromones of one of the cooks at her Hearth), and learn of the various lovers she takes afterwards.
\nThis a very well written piece (there is so much textual detail that it almost feels like a tapestry) but the story is ultimately little more than an extended alien biology lesson (although the kemmer process will be of interest to those that have read The Left Hand of Darkness<\/em>).
\n\u2217\u2217\u2217<\/strong> (Good). 7,950 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

The Three Descents of Jeremy Baker<\/strong><\/em> by Roger Zelazny (F&SF<\/em>, July 1995) begins with the Raven<\/em>, a spaceship whose crew includes Jeremy Baker, coming out of \u201cextracurricular space\u201d when its Warton-Purg drive fails. This failure occurs in the vicinity of a black hole, so the tidal forces soon destroy the ship, and Barton is the only one to survive (he happened to be testing his EVA suit at the time).
\nThe rest of the longer first chapter has him drift towards the black hole where he then encounters an energy being called Nik:<\/p>\n

\u201cWho\u2014What are you?\u201d Jeremy asked.
\n\u201cI\u2019m a Fleep,\u201d came the answer. \u201cI\u2019m that flickering patch of light you were wondering about a while back.\u201d
\n\u201cYou live around here?\u201d
\n\u201cI have for a long while, Jeremy. It\u2019s easy if you\u2019re an energy being with a lot of psi powers.\u201d
\n\u201cThat\u2019s how we\u2019re conversing?\u201d
\n\u201cYes. I installed a telepathic function in your mind while I had you unconscious.\u201d
\n\u201cWhy aren\u2019t I being stretched into miles of spaghetti right now?\u201d
\n\u201cI created an antigravity field between you and the black hole. They cancel.\u201d
\n\u201cWhy\u2019d you help me?\u201d
\n\u201cIt\u2019s good to have someone new to talk to. Sometimes I get bored with my fellow Fleep.\u201d\u00a0 p. 311<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nik goes on to tell Jeremy that the Fleep are conducting experiments on the black hole with the aim of reversing time. Then, after modifying Jeremy somewhat, Nik sends him back to before the destruction of the Raven<\/em>, where Jeremy attempts to rescue the ship but fails.
\nAnother Fleep called Vik sends him back for yet another go, but this also fails, and the chapter closes with Jeremy contemplating his doom.
\nThe second section has Jeremy inside the black hole with Nik discussing various singularity related matters (information loss, energy conservation, etc.).
\nThe third section then has them end up in a \u201ccornucopia\u201d\u2014an information store created by Nik\u2014after the black hole explodes. Nik creates a visual library metaphor for all the information that is inside the cornucopia, and they and the other books begin to get acquainted.
\nThis gets off to a pretty good start\u2014the breezy, flip style is entertaining\u2014 but the middle and ending morphs into pseudo-scientific musing about the properties of black holes.
\n\u2217\u2217<\/strong> (Average). 2,400 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Evolution <\/strong><\/em>by Nancy Kress (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, October 1995) begins with an edgy conversation between two mothers over a garden fence about a hospital doctor who has been murdered.<\/p>\n

Somebody shot and killed Dr. Bennett behind the Food Mart on April Street!\u201d Ceci Moore says breathlessly as I take the washing off the line.
I stand with a pair of Jack\u2019s boxer shorts in my hand and stare at her. I don\u2019t like Ceci. Her smirking pushiness, her need to shove her scrawny body into the middle of every situation, even ones she\u2019d be better off leaving alone. She\u2019s been that way since high school. But we\u2019re neighbors; we\u2019re stuck with each other. Dr. Bennett delivered both Sean and Jackie. Slowly I fold the boxer shorts and lay them in my clothesbasket.
\u201cWell, Betty, aren\u2019t you even going to say anything?\u201d
\u201cHave the police arrested anybody?\u201d
\u201cJanie Brunelli says there\u2019s no suspects.\u201d Tom Brunelli is one of Emerton\u2019s police officers. There are only five of them. He has trouble keeping his mouth shut. \u201cHonestly, Betty, you look like there\u2019s a murder in this town every day!\u201d\u00a0 p. 322<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This gritty soap opera feel is maintained throughout much of the rest of the story.
We later find that this crime has occurred in a near-future where widespread drug resistance has caused a partial breakdown of the health system, as well as vigilante resistance against the doctors and hospitals who dare to use the one remaining drug, endozine, that has any anti-bacterial efficacy.
Later on in the story Betty\u2019s son Jackie is linked, by an old high school friend who tries to recruit her to the pro-endozine side, to the vigilantes who are violently opposed to its use. We then find out, when the Betty can\u2019t find her son, that the latter\u2019s biological father is a hospital doctor called Salter (there is also some detail about their estrangement, and how Betty did prison time as a teenager when she shot out the windows of Salter\u2019s house and injured a caretaker\u2014I did say it was soap opera-ish).
When Betty goes to the hospital to see Salter to enlist his help in finding Sean (spoiler) there is an overly compressed scene where the news of endozine\u2019s failure is revealed (the CDC have identified a resistant bacterial strain) and, after a huge data dump about this, (the obviously sick) Salter announces he has a solution\u2014which is another bacteria to attack the resistant one. He gets Betty to fetch a syringe, and injects her, and then they leave the hospital just before it is blown up.
Betty then spreads the protective bacteria to everyone she meets.
This story doesn\u2019t entirely work, mostly because the SFnal substance of it is crammed into the long single scene just described\u2014and not in a particularly reader-friendly way (it\u2019s Jargon Central in some places). And there are also a couple of questions that are not answered. Why did Salter get sick if he had the cure? Why does Betty\u2019s vigilante son end up, at the end of the story, with the woman who tried to recruit Betty? On the other hand, some will appreciate the grittiness of the piece (and perhaps its current relevance), and there is some effective writing:<\/p>\n

I drive home, because I can\u2019t think what else to do.
I sit on the couch and reach back in my mind, for that other place, the place I haven\u2019t gone to since I got out of [prison]. The gray granite place that turns you to granite, too, so you can sit and wait for hours, for weeks, for years, without feeling very much. I go into that place, and I become the Elizabeth I was then, when Sean was in foster care someplace and I didn\u2019t know who had him or what they might be doing to him or how I would get him back. I go into the gray granite place to become stone.
And it doesn\u2019t work.\u00a0 p. 335<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2217\u2217<\/strong>+ (Average to Good). 9,000 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

The Day the Aliens Came<\/strong><\/em> by Robert Sheckley (New Legends<\/em>, edited by Greg Bear & Martin H. Greenberg, 1995) gets off to a quirky start when an alien Synestrian (they appear similar to humans but have faces that look as if they have melted) comes to the writer\u2019s door wanting to buy a story. They come to a deal and, when the writer finishes the story, he takes it to the alien and gets the latter\u2019s notes:<\/p>\n

\n

[The] Synester said, \u201cthis character you have in here, Alice.\u201d
\n\u201cYes, Alice,\u201d I said, though I couldn\u2019t quite remember writing an Alice into the story. Could he be referring to Alsace, the province in France? I decided not to question him. No sense appearing dumb on my own story.
\n\u201cNow, this Alice,\u201d he said, \u201cshe\u2019s the size of a small country, isn\u2019t she?\u201d
\nHe was definitely referring to Alsace, the province in France, and I had lost the moment when I could correct him. \u201cYes,\u201d I said, \u201cthat\u2019s right, just about the size of a small country.\u201d
\n\u201cWell, then,\u201d he said, \u201cwhy don\u2019t you have Alice fall in love with a bigger country in the shape of a pretzel?\u201d
\n\u201cA what?\u201d I said.
\n\u201cPretzel,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a frequently used image in Synestrian popular literature. Synestrians like to read that sort of thing.\u201d
\n\u201cDo they?\u201d I said.
\n\u201cYes,\u201d he said. \u201cSynestrians like to imagine people in the shape of pretzels. You stick that in, it\u2019ll make it more visual.\u201d
\n\u201cVisual,\u201d I said, my mind a blank.
\n\u201cYes,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause we gotta consider the movie possibilities.\u201d
\n\u201cYes, of course,\u201d I said, remembering that I got sixty percent [of the movie rights].\u00a0 p. 356<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This extract pretty much sums up the quirky, offbeat tone of the story. Unfortunately the following scenes are equally as odd: we learn that his wife is also an alien; a family of Capellans turn up in their house as uninvited guests; the writer\u2019s home is burgled when they are out but the Capellans just watch; the Capellan\u2019s baby is kidnapped and they don\u2019t seem to care; the couple watch a show where a man eats small aliens that congregate on his plate; the couple\u2019s baby arrives before the wife goes into labour; etc.)
\nThis just seems like random, pointless nonsense, and seems typical of what I\u2019ve read of Sheckley\u2019s late period work. I don\u2019t know if he forgot how to write normal stories, or whether he was attempting to write some kind of modernist or post-modernist humour but, either way, it\u2019s not worth your time.
\n– (Awful). 3,800 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Microbe <\/strong><\/em>by Joan Slonczewski (Analog<\/em>, August 1995) is one of the author\u2019s \u2018Elysium Cycle\u2019 stories, and opens with an exploration team discussing the biochemistry of the alien planet, IP3, that they are orbiting. The team are Andra, a human female; Skyhook, a sentient space shuttle AI; and Pelt, a sentient nanoplast AI who also serves as a protective suit for Andra.
\nTheir discussion, in particular, focuses on the alien cell structure of life on the planet, and they watch as an alien cell splits into three. Unfortunately these discussions (there are more later on in the story) tend to result in writing like this:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe usual double helix?\u201d asked Skyhook. The double helix is a ladder of DNA nucleotide pairs, always adenine with thymine or guanine with cytosine, for the four different \u201cletters\u201d of the DNA code. When a cell divides to make two cells, the entire helix unzips, then fills in a complementary strand for each daughter cell.\u00a0 p. 372 (Year\u2019s Best SF<\/em>, edited by David Hartwell)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The second act of the story sees Andra, Pelt and Skyhook exploring the surface, where they discover a herd of strange rolling aliens which are later attacked by a much larger one. Then Pelt starts malfunctioning, and Andra (spoiler) barely makes it back to the shuttle before Pelt shuts down. There is some further discussion about the way that the alien microbes attacked Pelt\u2019s nanoplast structure, and the crew\u2019s solution.
\nThis reads like part science lecture, part story, and has an open ending that suggests it is the first chapter of a novel. I\u2019d have preferred a longer piece that was more of a story, but overall this is okay, I guess.
\n\u2217\u2217<\/strong> (Average). 4,200 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

The Ziggurat<\/strong><\/em> by Gene Wolfe (Full Spectrum<\/em> #5, edited by Tom Dupree, Jennifer Hershey, Janna Silverstein, 1995) wasn\u2019t, given that the last two stories of his I read were Seven American Nights<\/em> and The Fifth Head of Cerberus<\/em>, exactly what I was expecting, and the piece initially feels more like something from Stephen King. To that end, the beginning is not only evocative of place\u2014a snowed-in log cabin in the woods\u2014but also of character\u2014Emery is estranged from his wife Jan and is waiting in his cabin for her and their children to arrive, along with the divorce papers she is bringing for him to sign. While he tidies up before their arrival he broods about this, and also thinks about a visiting coyote1<\/sup> he has been feeding and trying to tame:<\/p>\n

The coyote had gone up on the back porch!
\nAfter a second or two he realized he was grinning like a fool, and forced himself to stop and look instead.
\nThere were no tracks. Presumably the coyote had eaten this morning before the snow started, for the bowl was empty, licked clean. The time would come, and soon, when he would touch the rough yellow-gray head, when the coyote would lick his fingers and fall asleep in front of the little fieldstone fireplace in his cabin.\u00a0 p. 391<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While he is outside, Emery also gets the impression he is being watched from the woods, a feeling that is confirmed when he sees a flash of a mirror . . . .
\nThe rest of the first half of the story proceeds at a brisk pace. Emery gets dressed and goes to the area he saw the light, only to look back at his cabin to see he is being burgled. When he shouts at one of the small, dark figures, they raise the rifle they have taken from cabin and shoot. He takes cover. Five minutes later Jan and the three kids arrive, but when Emery hurries back he sees the interlopers have vanished. He decides to keep quiet about what has just happened.
\nThe next part of the story switches temporarily from thriller to family soap opera, with a conversation between Emery and Jan about the details of the their divorce (and an allegation of child abuse by Emery on the twin girls). This culminates in Emery\u2019s refusal to sign the papers, and Jan and the two girls leaving the cabin (unlike the twins, Brook is Emery\u2019s biological son and he stays). Shortly after the mother and daughters exit Emery and Brook hear a scream, and rush outside to see the burglars under the hood of the car, seemingly once again looking for parts (as they did with Emery\u2019s Jeep earlier on). There is a struggle, and a shot is fired: the interlopers flee. After the family regroup, they realise one of the twins, Aileen, is missing.
\nEmery then drives through the snow towards the lake to see if he can find her, eventually coming upon the burglars, who are dark-skinned and petite young women. They have Aileen, but Emery manages to trade the car for her\u2014although the women don’t speak throughout the exchange\u2014and, after another scuffle during which he is shot (a flesh wound in his side), father and step-daughter walk back to the cabin.
\nAt this point (a third of the way through) the story starts becoming SFnal: Aileen says that she has been in a ziggurat (she later clarifies that it wasn\u2019t actually an ancient terraced structure, it just had the same shape), where she was stripped and examined, shown pictures of things she didn\u2019t recognise, and given food before she slept for a while. Emery is puzzled, and tells her she has only been gone a couple of hours.
\nWhen they get back to the cabin domestic hostilities resume as Emery undresses to tend his wound, and the girls are told not to look:<\/p>\n

Jan snapped her fingers. \u201cOil! Oil will soften the dried blood. Wesson Oil. Have you got any?\u201d
\nBrook pointed at the cabinet above the sink. Emery said, \u201cThere\u2019s a bottle of olive oil up there, or there should be.\u201d
\n\u201cLeen\u2019s peeking,\u201d Brook told Jan, who told Aileen, \u201cDo that again, young lady, and I\u2019ll smack your face!
\n\u201cEmery, you really ought to make two rooms out of this. This is ridiculous.\u201d
\n\u201cIt was designed for four men,\u201d he explained, \u201ca hunting party, or a fishing party. You women always insist on being included, then complain about what you find when you are.\u201d\u00a0 p. 425<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is more of this kind of thing:<\/p>\n

Privately [Emery] wondered which was worse, a woman who had never learned how to get what she wanted or a woman who had.
\n\u201cYou actually proposed that we patch it up. Then you act like this?\u201d [said Jan.]
\n\u201cI\u2019m trying to keep things pleasant.\u201d
\n\u201cThen do it!\u201d
\n\u201cYou mean you want to be courted while you\u2019re divorcing me. That\u2019s what\u2019s usually meant by a friendly divorce, from what I\u2019ve been able to gather.\u201d\u00a0 p. 426-427<\/p>\n

\u201cEmery, you hardly ever answer a direct question. It\u2019s one of the things I dislike most about you.\u201d
\n\u201cThat\u2019s what men say about women,\u201d he protested mildly.
\n\u201cWomen are being diplomatic. Men are rude.\u201d
\n\u201cI suppose you\u2019re right. What did you ask me?\u201d
\n\u201cThat isn\u2019t the point. The point is that you ignore me until I raise my voice.\u201d\u00a0 p. 430<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Emery finally agrees to take his wife and daughters into town and, for the next part of the story, it is just the two men, Emery and Brook, who are left to deal with any remaining problems back at the cabin. (Apart from a couple of phonecalls, the weather conveniently keeps the local sheriff and the other authorities away.)
\nAs they drive back, Emery does some more pontificating to Brook on the nature of women (\u201cFor women, love is [. . .] magic, which is why they frequently use the language of fairy tales when they talk about it.\u201d). Then there is talk of \u201cBrownies\u201d (fairies) and the like, and an information dump where Emery speculates (spoiler) about the women landing the \u201cziggurat\u201d in the lake; that they are afraid of men and want to leave the area; and a possible time-distortion effect that would explain Aileen\u2019s experience.
\nThey sleep, and when Emery wakes up the next morning he realises Brook isn\u2019t there. When he goes outside to find him he discovers one of the women has killed him with the axe. After he covers the body and puts it by the woodpile, he then calls the undertaker and sheriff. Then he calls the mobile phone in Jan\u2019s car: one of the women answers, and Emery tells her he is going to kill them for what they did to his son.
\nThe last section of the story sees the climactic encounters between Emery and the women, which take place in both the ziggurat\/space-time ship (where he fights a woman with an axe) and in the cabin (where the other two ambush him, and he kills one and injures the other.
\nThe final scene has him tending the wounded woman: Emery tells her he us going to burn the ziggurat and that she will just have fit into current day society. While she sleeps he plans a new company which will exploit the time-travellers\u2019 technology. He also determines to make the woman, who he calls Tamar, his new wife. Emery talks to himself while she sleeps, saying that they\u2019ll have a family, and build a house on the lakeside to take advantage of the still functioning time distortion device. She squeezes his hand, and the story ends.
\nNow the unfortunate thing about reducing this story to a plot summary is that it makes it sound like something that A. E. van Vogt might have cobbled together in one of his wilder moments, and I\u2019d have to concede that at times it does have a whiff of that about it. However, it is a very readable piece. The problem is that is it a mixed bag, and the second half is not as good as the first. Part of this is due to the wild plot, and the way that key information is delivered (apart from the dumping a lot of this in the middle section, I\u2019m not sure that there is a clear mention of a ziggurat in the middle of the lake until he goes into it later on). Then there are the Emery\u2019s actions and his character: the former seem borderline reckless and\/or idiotic at times, and he comes over, at best, as a complex character, or, at worst, as having patriarchal, misogynistic, and abuser tendencies. Whichever side you come down on regarding Emery\u2019s character, this is something which threatens to bend the story into a no-man\u2019s land between a dark, mainstream examination of a complicated man, and a highly entertaining SFnal potboiler (or as I found out later, make it a story about the delusions of a madman4<\/sup>). At times it\u2019s an uneven mix.
\nThese reservations notwithstanding, it is a fast paced read with some good description and characterisation, and, if you don\u2019t pay too much attention to the bonkers plot, and the distractions of Emery\u2019s character, it\u2019s a pretty good read. I enjoyed it.
\n\u2217\u2217\u2217<\/strong>+ (Good to Very Good) 27,200 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n

The only non-fiction in the volume is Introduction: Science Fiction Is Alive and Well<\/strong><\/em> by David G. Hartwell and the Story introductions<\/strong><\/em> before every piece.
\nThe Introduction<\/strong><\/em> opens by setting the book up as, it would seem, a direct competitor to Dozois, not only commercially but aesthetically:<\/p>\n

For decades, until recently, there was usually one or more good year\u2019s best anthologies available in paperback in the SF field. The last ones vanished with the deaths of distinguished editors Terry Carr and Donald A. Wollheim. There has been a notable gap. This book fills that need.
\nFurthermore, the existence of more than one year\u2019s best anthology in the SF genre has been good for the field. Volumes which differ in taste or in aesthetic criteria clarify and encourage knowledgeable discourse in the field and about the field. Therefore this book announces itself in opposition to the other extant anthologies.
\nHere is the problem. Other books have so blurred the boundaries between science fiction and everything else that it is possible for an observer to conclude that SF is dead or dying out. This book declares that science fiction is still alive; is fertile and varied in its excellences. Most important, SF has a separate and distinct identity within fairly clear boundaries exemplified by the contents of this book.\u00a0 p. ix-x<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The rest of the piece covers a few high points of the year: a good one for novellas, and also for Interzone<\/em>, which Hartwell states published the best speculative fiction of the year (although he uses none of its stories in this volume). Science Fiction Age<\/em> and Tomorrow<\/em> are also mentioned (one story from each here) but not Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em> (I\u2019m beginning to think that Hartwell is not a Dozois fan). Hartwell closes by saying it was \u201cnot a notable\u201d year for anthologies (apart from Far Futures<\/em>, Full Spectrum #5<\/em> and New Legends<\/em>) and that they \u201cmade the magazines look good.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n

In conclusion, this debut volume struck me as a very mixed bag with no outstanding stories (and one which misses nearly all the Hugo and Nebula short fiction nominees, although that is no guarantee of quality).
\nI also wasn\u2019t impressed with the running order of the stories: I certainly wouldn\u2019t open with the Kelly story\u2014setting aside my dislike of that piece, it is inward looking (portals, spaceships, dinosaurs), and written in that inbred SFnal jargon that so many genre stories use. Any casual non-SF reader picking up the book and reading the first few pages of that story would wonder what on Earth was going on, and quickly place the book back on the shelf. I would have thought that a \u2018Best of the Year\u2019 anthologist would open with the best of their shorter mainstream-ish pieces (the Silverberg would be a good choice if it wasn\u2019t so long), not only to attract casual bookbuyers, but to allow regular SF readers an easy entry in to the book.
\nThere are also other programming decisions I didn\u2019t understand: why would you have the Baxter (which I would suppose people would call \u201chard SF\u201d but is really a superscience fantasy) followed by the Benford, which is essentially more of the same with rivets?
\nLast of all, I note that three of the \u201cname\u201d writers here (Benford, Zelazny, and Sheckley) produce some of the weakest work (a characteristic of Hartwell\u2019s volumes I\u2019m told).
\nHere\u2019s hoping next year is better.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Notes:
\n1. In Kelly\u2019s story the spacing scene (with its \u201cdie, you weepy bitch\u201d) and the later \u201cthink like a dinosaur\u201d comments suggest that the author thinks Godwin\u2019s story is a misogynistic one.*<\/sup> This analysis seems to miss the fact that Godwin\u2019s story is a Trolley Problem**<\/sup> (sometimes you may only have two dreadful choices, pick one) and that the story\u2019s stowaway was specifically an attractive young woman so as to produce the most sympathetic response in the original Astounding<\/em> readership (who were of the \u201cwomen and children first into the lifeboats\u201d generation, and would generally have been appalled at the story\u2019s conclusion).***<\/sup>
\nIf Godwin\u2019s story was meant to be misogynistic it would look entirely different: Barlow would hector Cross about her stupidity, lecture her at great length about the physical limitations of the universe that will result in her death, and the spacing scene would be as explicitly brutal and unpleasant as that in Kelly\u2019s story. None of this happens in the Godwin piece. Instead, Cross is portrayed as sympathetic character (the cheap gypsy sandals, the lost childhood kitten, the final heart-breaking conversation with her brother, etc.) and her death is presented as something that will be devastating to not only her family but to Barlow the pilot. But, ultimately, it is a Trolley Problem, and Barlow has to choose one of the two terrible options.<\/p>\n

*<\/sup> That said, \u201cmisogynistic\u201d is a better guess than Cory Doctorow\u2019s ludicrous suggestion in a 2019 Locus<\/em> article that the story is \u201ca parable about the foolishness of women and the role of men in guiding them to accept the cold, hard facts of life.\u201d
\n**<\/sup> The Wikipedia page on The Trolley Problem<\/a>, or the more entertaining The Good Life<\/a><\/em> take on the matter. In the latter clip I suspect most of today\u2019s SF fans would end up on the do-nothing left hand track (where five people are killed instead of one) because they would be too busy wringing their hands (see the recent Hugo winning As the Last I May Know<\/em> by S.L. Huang, this generation\u2019s The Cold Equations<\/em>, and you\u2019ll see what I mean).
\n***<\/sup> Campbell spoke about the reason a young woman was selected for Godwin\u2019s story in his collected letters. See The Cold Equations<\/em> review here<\/a>, footnote 7.<\/p>\n

2. These boy-meets-girl love stories clutter up quite a lot of Haldeman\u2019s work, if I recall correctly. I suspect most of them are an idealised version of his own relationship.<\/p>\n

3. Shakespeare\u2019s 18th<\/sup> sonnet is here<\/a>, along with explanatory notes, if you really must.<\/p>\n

4. After posting this review, one of my Facebook group members posted a link to a draft of an article by Marc Armani (a Wolfe scholar) which describes what the story is really about (spoiler): Emery is delusional and has killed\/raped the members of his family (or something like that). I wonder what my blood pressure was when I read the line \u201cIf we accept that Wolfe might occasionally present delusion as objective narrative fact [. . .] then some aspects of \u201cThe Ziggurat\u201d become easier to contextualize.\u201d
\nI think I am now officially past caring about what this story, or any of Wolfe\u2019s work, is about. But those of you who like walking on quicksand, knock yourself out.
\nThe discussion thread and link to the Armani article are here<\/a> (although the Armani link may have expired by now\u2014buy the book).\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: David Hartwell\u2019s \u2018Best of the Year\u2019 series gets off to a lacklustre start with a volume that contains nothing outstanding but which has two long stories by Robert Silverberg, Hot Times in Magma City, and Gene Wolfe, Ziggurat that, along with William Browning Spencer\u2019s Downloading Midnight, manage to drag up the average. There are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-the-year-anthologies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-3v5","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13459"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13487,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13459\/revisions\/13487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}