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elusivity's review against another edition
3.0
A typical collection, some decent stories, a few excellent ones. More than anything, this is a glimpse of the fears and dreams and preoccupations from 3 decades past, some of which can't help but seem quaint, and others, remain relevant even today.
Nevertheless, due to that very disconnection, I found much of this collection a chore to go through.
YMMV.
THE JAGUAR HUNTER - Lucius Shepard
3 STARS
A native Indian man sent to kill a magical jaguar, who turns out to be a beautiful woman of his tribe and also guardian to another world he fears yet yearns to go.
Hmm. I'm conflicted as to how I feel about this one. On the one hand, this is lyrical and beautifully crafted, a man caught between myths of his culture and the greed of the new world. And yet, as I read this, I cannot stop thinking this is such a MAN story. Of course death would appear as a beautiful, seductive woman who insta-love/want him, who is mysterious, unfathomable, and will lead him to either death or ultimate freedom. Hmf.
DOGFIGHT - Michael Swanwick & William Gibson
4 STARS
A thief finds new fascination with a neuro-driven combat game, becomes determined to play against a top player. In his drive to do, he alienates everyone, crosses boundaries, destroys his opponent utterly, and ends up with empty victory.
Raw feelings in this one. An old, much-written story in new clothes, and one especially designed for nerds and geeks. A good read.
FERMI & FROST - Frederik Pohl
2 STARS
Realistic imagination of how the world might end in nuclear holocaust.
Written in the 60s, and shows. Has not aged well. Nowadays reads as melodramatic and lacking in finesse.
GREEN DAYS IN BRUNEI - Bruce Sterling
SKIPPED
Found this one difficult to absorb, couldn't read more than a couple of pages.
SNOW - John Crowley
3.5 STARS
Precursor to the current 24/7 selfie-culture, a flying WASP records a person for 8,000 hours, but replays in random access. A man views footage from his dead wife as video slowly degrades.
Memory is more than footage. Our human minds provides enhancement, significance, and discards the meaningless quotidian. Recordings can never describe a person; our internal narratives create and recreate each of us anew, with every iteration.
THE FRINGE - Orson Scott Card
4 STARS
In a post-apocalyptic, food-scarce society that has fallen back upon farming to survive, a teacher with cerebral palsy whistleblows on farmers in the small community hoarding a portion of their produce for black market sale. 3 of his students threw him into a crick to die, and with much hardship, he survived, yet did not reveal the students names.
Perspective from a complicated, difficult-to-like but morally upright man, who must deal with his own envy of those who are physically healthy, feels a calling to educate and preserve civilization, yet glimpses the ultimate pointlessness of it all.
THE LAKE WAS FULL OF ARTIFICIAL THINGS - Karen Joy Fowler
3 STARS
Woman go through therapy, re-living recreated (from her memories) scenario to relieve the life-long guilt of a long-ago relationship. Somehow the therapy is intruding into her waking life..
Workmanlike.
SAILING TO BYZANTIUM - Robert Silverberg
4 STARS
A 20th century man found himself living in 50th century, companion to a woman Gioia. They travel through the fanciful recreations of historical cities, and he slowly comes to realize the truth of what he is, and the world.
Deceptively simple, a slowly-unwinding mystery full of heart. I disagree with the conclusion, however. She -- that specific iteration of her -- would be dead, no matter how accurately she is reconstructed, and that to the reconstructed her and others she might as well be alive.
SOLSTICE - James Patrick Kely
2 STARS
A lonely, twisted man creates a daughter/clone 25 years younger, raises her and makes her his lover and daughter and possessive, all amidst the background of high-tech artisanal drugs and, for some reason, the Stonehenge.
Ugh. Self-indulgent.
DUKE PASQUALE'S RING - Avram Davidson
SKIPPED
No idea what the heck this one is about. Obtuse, cryptic writing style.
MORE THAN THE SUM OF HIS PARTS - Joe Haldeman
3.5 STARS
Cyborg limbs demonstrate the principle that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Diary of an engineer is injured while working in space, and installed with cybernetics, which smoothly transitioned from utter joy at his acquired power to casual disregard of other humans and becoming an evil mastermind.
The ending is either cliched or a clever twist, I can't decide -- hinting strongly that, although the previous evil has been subdued, the current "hero" moves toward that same fate..
OUT OF ALL THEM BRIGHT STARS - Nancy Kress
2.5 STARS
Small town diner meeting with friendly alien, reflecting small-minded sides of humanity.
SIDE EFFECTS - Walter Jon Williams
NO RATING
Irresponsible doctors and pharmacology industry personnel, prescribing random drugs to poor people, with random side effects.
I confess to wildly skimming through this one. Very anti-Greed-Is-Me 80s vibe. Essentially skipped.
THE ONLY NEAT THING TO DO - James Tiptree, Jr.
3.5 STARS
The tone of a 60s YA adventure story yet dark subject matter. A young girl goes secretly adventuring out into space and encounters an equally-young alien whose lifestyle is to takeover the brain of host animals and forming a single symbiosis. As time passes in their journey toward the alien's home world, they slowly come to realize that this strange symbiosis is fatal to humans, and both sacrifices themselves by diving into the nearest sun.
A lovely, straight forward story that started out slow, but culminate to describe a lovely but doomed friendship between two very goodhearted young creatures.
DINNER IN AUDOGHAST - Bruce Sterling
3.5 STARS
Audoghast is a rich African empire in the 1000s. A rich man dines sumptuously with 3 friends and beauteous courtesans, and a prophet telling total truth of Africa's eventual destruction and fall of the Arabian world.
Describing what could have been 1 night out of the 1001 Nights. Those who live in luxurious now could never recognize truth, when it is so unpalatable.
UNDER SIEGE - George R. R. Martin
4 STARS
In an unknown apocalyptic future, a deformed mutant with time traveling abilities is part of a governmental, last-ditch project that sends his mind back in history, into that of a Finnish Colonel in the 1800s, trying to influence history to avert their nuclear-disaster future. He ends up flouting the suggestions to send the historical figure on a suicide mission, kills his future body, and lives a long life slightly-merged with the Colonel, changing the future in his own way.
Twisted and strange and poignant. A reminder that GRR Martin is indeed a good writer.
FLYING SAUCER ROCK & ROLL - Howard Waldrop
SKIPPED
A SPANISH LESSON - Lucius Shepard
3.5 STARS
Pseudo-biographical. Young Lucius in the 60s spent sometime by the beaches in Costa del Sol, living hedonistic expat lifestyle, until a pair of brother and sisters came. They are small, strange-looking, identical, and behaved strangely. Lucius gets close to them, and discovers that they are clones, and escaped from another universe -- dystopic, totalitarian, horrifying, utterly controlled by an undead Hitler and his legion of shadows. They escaped to this universe through an interdimensional tunnel, which they are trying close to stop potential capture. During the night they chose to close the tunnel, humans interfered, causing the brother to self-sacrifice by stepping back into the tunnel to lead enemies away. Lucius, from a sense of guilt, takes a nearly-silent sister to a Tibetan Buddhist nunnery, and upon leaving her there, has a realization about American sense of voyeurism over other people's pain and yet not truly willing to help.
Was doing great as a slowly-unraveling story for 3/4 of the way. The glimpse of alien world is fantastically grim and cruel, a Third Reich from a fevered nightmare. The moralizing, at the end however, I could have done without -- even the narrator himself said that this moralizing after a story's climax are said to be a weakness of his, even as he went on to say in this instance it was justified. Hm. It wasn't justified.
ROADSIDE RESCUE - Pat Cadigan
2.5 STAR
Earth and alien encounter. An Earth man with car troubles got picked up by an alien and his Earth employee, who scares him because the alien enjoys the sound of frightened people.
Straight-forward.
PAPER DRAGONS - James P. Blaylock
3 STARS
Magical Realism story of a strange California, where the narrator lives a normal life where giant worms eats his tomato plants, with one neighbor fanatic about the migration of giant, even car-sized, crabs that caused some destruction in the neighborhood, destroying a pseudo-living semi-mechanic semi-living paper dragon of another neighbor, who spends a year unsuccessfully rebuilding something similar.
A famous story, and one I recognize as being well-written. I always find it difficult to understand Magical Realism, though, where the protagonist always go about their flat, "normal" everyday lives even as wild fantastic things pass before their eyes.
MAGAZINE SECTION - R. A. Lafferty
3 STARS
A man writes seemingly-fantastical stories for Sunday Magazines, and increasingly finding himself out of a job because people could no longer believe them, despite their truths.
THE WAR AT HOME - Lewis Shiner
2.5 STARS
People who have never gone to Nam are racked by vivid hallucinations /memories of all its trauma. One man's descent into a PTSD that is not his own.
Very short story. Perhaps vivid, but Nam as a subject ... feels very distant to me. This story did not age well.
ROCKABYE BABY - S. C. Sykes
4 STARS
A man broke his neck and becomes a paraplegic, loses all his former life, yet in the process became drawn to reading, learning, and found his artistic talent. And then, he encountered an experimental treatment that would enable him to regrow all his limbs, yet at the same time would wipe clean all his memories. A paraplegic friend had taken that choice, became healthy yet intensely miserable, and eventually killed himself. The man himself, facing that same choice, hesitates, hesitates... yet finally decides to take the same plunge.
Another story of man trapped inside a husk of a body. Vivid illustration of a dilemma -- what constitutes a person if not all the memories and emotions and experiences? Without that, we are nothing. And yet, who's to say in that situation, most of us wouldn't make the same choice.
GREEN MARS - Kim Stanley Robinson
4 STARS
Roger, a member of the Red party, having quit his government position and in a depression over his failures to prevent Mars from being turned into another Earth. He becomes part of a team to climb Olympic Mons. Climb requires close attention to the here-and-now, a kind of physical meditation, and in the process, Roger begins to recognize the beauty of Mars, which remains regardless whether it is covered with Earth flora and fauna. He also reunites with Eileen, who was his lover hundreds of years in past, who tells him some of the philosophy she is reading. He comes to learn that one's past need not be immutable, a burden, but that life forces us to constantly re-evaluate the past, thereby changing it. At the end, he learns to love this new Mars.
I now understand why this series is so popular. It is written with the focus that mainstream literary novels have, examining the details and concerns of human life, written in vivid, present-focused prose, yet set in a fantastic new world, in the near future with some believable projected new technology. An interesting story.
Nevertheless, due to that very disconnection, I found much of this collection a chore to go through.
YMMV.
Spoiler
THE JAGUAR HUNTER - Lucius Shepard
3 STARS
A native Indian man sent to kill a magical jaguar, who turns out to be a beautiful woman of his tribe and also guardian to another world he fears yet yearns to go.
Hmm. I'm conflicted as to how I feel about this one. On the one hand, this is lyrical and beautifully crafted, a man caught between myths of his culture and the greed of the new world. And yet, as I read this, I cannot stop thinking this is such a MAN story. Of course death would appear as a beautiful, seductive woman who insta-love/want him, who is mysterious, unfathomable, and will lead him to either death or ultimate freedom. Hmf.
DOGFIGHT - Michael Swanwick & William Gibson
4 STARS
A thief finds new fascination with a neuro-driven combat game, becomes determined to play against a top player. In his drive to do, he alienates everyone, crosses boundaries, destroys his opponent utterly, and ends up with empty victory.
Raw feelings in this one. An old, much-written story in new clothes, and one especially designed for nerds and geeks. A good read.
FERMI & FROST - Frederik Pohl
2 STARS
Realistic imagination of how the world might end in nuclear holocaust.
Written in the 60s, and shows. Has not aged well. Nowadays reads as melodramatic and lacking in finesse.
GREEN DAYS IN BRUNEI - Bruce Sterling
SKIPPED
Found this one difficult to absorb, couldn't read more than a couple of pages.
SNOW - John Crowley
3.5 STARS
Precursor to the current 24/7 selfie-culture, a flying WASP records a person for 8,000 hours, but replays in random access. A man views footage from his dead wife as video slowly degrades.
Memory is more than footage. Our human minds provides enhancement, significance, and discards the meaningless quotidian. Recordings can never describe a person; our internal narratives create and recreate each of us anew, with every iteration.
THE FRINGE - Orson Scott Card
4 STARS
In a post-apocalyptic, food-scarce society that has fallen back upon farming to survive, a teacher with cerebral palsy whistleblows on farmers in the small community hoarding a portion of their produce for black market sale. 3 of his students threw him into a crick to die, and with much hardship, he survived, yet did not reveal the students names.
Perspective from a complicated, difficult-to-like but morally upright man, who must deal with his own envy of those who are physically healthy, feels a calling to educate and preserve civilization, yet glimpses the ultimate pointlessness of it all.
THE LAKE WAS FULL OF ARTIFICIAL THINGS - Karen Joy Fowler
3 STARS
Woman go through therapy, re-living recreated (from her memories) scenario to relieve the life-long guilt of a long-ago relationship. Somehow the therapy is intruding into her waking life..
Workmanlike.
SAILING TO BYZANTIUM - Robert Silverberg
4 STARS
A 20th century man found himself living in 50th century, companion to a woman Gioia. They travel through the fanciful recreations of historical cities, and he slowly comes to realize the truth of what he is, and the world.
Deceptively simple, a slowly-unwinding mystery full of heart. I disagree with the conclusion, however. She -- that specific iteration of her -- would be dead, no matter how accurately she is reconstructed, and that to the reconstructed her and others she might as well be alive.
SOLSTICE - James Patrick Kely
2 STARS
A lonely, twisted man creates a daughter/clone 25 years younger, raises her and makes her his lover and daughter and possessive, all amidst the background of high-tech artisanal drugs and, for some reason, the Stonehenge.
Ugh. Self-indulgent.
DUKE PASQUALE'S RING - Avram Davidson
SKIPPED
No idea what the heck this one is about. Obtuse, cryptic writing style.
MORE THAN THE SUM OF HIS PARTS - Joe Haldeman
3.5 STARS
Cyborg limbs demonstrate the principle that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Diary of an engineer is injured while working in space, and installed with cybernetics, which smoothly transitioned from utter joy at his acquired power to casual disregard of other humans and becoming an evil mastermind.
The ending is either cliched or a clever twist, I can't decide -- hinting strongly that, although the previous evil has been subdued, the current "hero" moves toward that same fate..
OUT OF ALL THEM BRIGHT STARS - Nancy Kress
2.5 STARS
Small town diner meeting with friendly alien, reflecting small-minded sides of humanity.
SIDE EFFECTS - Walter Jon Williams
NO RATING
Irresponsible doctors and pharmacology industry personnel, prescribing random drugs to poor people, with random side effects.
I confess to wildly skimming through this one. Very anti-Greed-Is-Me 80s vibe. Essentially skipped.
THE ONLY NEAT THING TO DO - James Tiptree, Jr.
3.5 STARS
The tone of a 60s YA adventure story yet dark subject matter. A young girl goes secretly adventuring out into space and encounters an equally-young alien whose lifestyle is to takeover the brain of host animals and forming a single symbiosis. As time passes in their journey toward the alien's home world, they slowly come to realize that this strange symbiosis is fatal to humans, and both sacrifices themselves by diving into the nearest sun.
A lovely, straight forward story that started out slow, but culminate to describe a lovely but doomed friendship between two very goodhearted young creatures.
DINNER IN AUDOGHAST - Bruce Sterling
3.5 STARS
Audoghast is a rich African empire in the 1000s. A rich man dines sumptuously with 3 friends and beauteous courtesans, and a prophet telling total truth of Africa's eventual destruction and fall of the Arabian world.
Describing what could have been 1 night out of the 1001 Nights. Those who live in luxurious now could never recognize truth, when it is so unpalatable.
UNDER SIEGE - George R. R. Martin
4 STARS
In an unknown apocalyptic future, a deformed mutant with time traveling abilities is part of a governmental, last-ditch project that sends his mind back in history, into that of a Finnish Colonel in the 1800s, trying to influence history to avert their nuclear-disaster future. He ends up flouting the suggestions to send the historical figure on a suicide mission, kills his future body, and lives a long life slightly-merged with the Colonel, changing the future in his own way.
Twisted and strange and poignant. A reminder that GRR Martin is indeed a good writer.
FLYING SAUCER ROCK & ROLL - Howard Waldrop
SKIPPED
A SPANISH LESSON - Lucius Shepard
3.5 STARS
Pseudo-biographical. Young Lucius in the 60s spent sometime by the beaches in Costa del Sol, living hedonistic expat lifestyle, until a pair of brother and sisters came. They are small, strange-looking, identical, and behaved strangely. Lucius gets close to them, and discovers that they are clones, and escaped from another universe -- dystopic, totalitarian, horrifying, utterly controlled by an undead Hitler and his legion of shadows. They escaped to this universe through an interdimensional tunnel, which they are trying close to stop potential capture. During the night they chose to close the tunnel, humans interfered, causing the brother to self-sacrifice by stepping back into the tunnel to lead enemies away. Lucius, from a sense of guilt, takes a nearly-silent sister to a Tibetan Buddhist nunnery, and upon leaving her there, has a realization about American sense of voyeurism over other people's pain and yet not truly willing to help.
Was doing great as a slowly-unraveling story for 3/4 of the way. The glimpse of alien world is fantastically grim and cruel, a Third Reich from a fevered nightmare. The moralizing, at the end however, I could have done without -- even the narrator himself said that this moralizing after a story's climax are said to be a weakness of his, even as he went on to say in this instance it was justified. Hm. It wasn't justified.
ROADSIDE RESCUE - Pat Cadigan
2.5 STAR
Earth and alien encounter. An Earth man with car troubles got picked up by an alien and his Earth employee, who scares him because the alien enjoys the sound of frightened people.
Straight-forward.
PAPER DRAGONS - James P. Blaylock
3 STARS
Magical Realism story of a strange California, where the narrator lives a normal life where giant worms eats his tomato plants, with one neighbor fanatic about the migration of giant, even car-sized, crabs that caused some destruction in the neighborhood, destroying a pseudo-living semi-mechanic semi-living paper dragon of another neighbor, who spends a year unsuccessfully rebuilding something similar.
A famous story, and one I recognize as being well-written. I always find it difficult to understand Magical Realism, though, where the protagonist always go about their flat, "normal" everyday lives even as wild fantastic things pass before their eyes.
MAGAZINE SECTION - R. A. Lafferty
3 STARS
A man writes seemingly-fantastical stories for Sunday Magazines, and increasingly finding himself out of a job because people could no longer believe them, despite their truths.
THE WAR AT HOME - Lewis Shiner
2.5 STARS
People who have never gone to Nam are racked by vivid hallucinations /memories of all its trauma. One man's descent into a PTSD that is not his own.
Very short story. Perhaps vivid, but Nam as a subject ... feels very distant to me. This story did not age well.
ROCKABYE BABY - S. C. Sykes
4 STARS
A man broke his neck and becomes a paraplegic, loses all his former life, yet in the process became drawn to reading, learning, and found his artistic talent. And then, he encountered an experimental treatment that would enable him to regrow all his limbs, yet at the same time would wipe clean all his memories. A paraplegic friend had taken that choice, became healthy yet intensely miserable, and eventually killed himself. The man himself, facing that same choice, hesitates, hesitates... yet finally decides to take the same plunge.
Another story of man trapped inside a husk of a body. Vivid illustration of a dilemma -- what constitutes a person if not all the memories and emotions and experiences? Without that, we are nothing. And yet, who's to say in that situation, most of us wouldn't make the same choice.
GREEN MARS - Kim Stanley Robinson
4 STARS
Roger, a member of the Red party, having quit his government position and in a depression over his failures to prevent Mars from being turned into another Earth. He becomes part of a team to climb Olympic Mons. Climb requires close attention to the here-and-now, a kind of physical meditation, and in the process, Roger begins to recognize the beauty of Mars, which remains regardless whether it is covered with Earth flora and fauna. He also reunites with Eileen, who was his lover hundreds of years in past, who tells him some of the philosophy she is reading. He comes to learn that one's past need not be immutable, a burden, but that life forces us to constantly re-evaluate the past, thereby changing it. At the end, he learns to love this new Mars.
I now understand why this series is so popular. It is written with the focus that mainstream literary novels have, examining the details and concerns of human life, written in vivid, present-focused prose, yet set in a fantastic new world, in the near future with some believable projected new technology. An interesting story.
austinbeeman's review against another edition
4.0
THE YEAR’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION: THIRD ANNUAL COLLECTION
RATED 81% POSITIVE. STORY SCORE 3.83
24 STORIES : 7 GREAT / 9 GOOD / 7 AVERAGE / 0 POOR / 1 DNF
It is fitting that this anthology ends with Kim Stanley Robinson’s masterful tale of mountain climbing on Mars, for this is a collection with some soaring peaks. Some of these stories would be considered on any list of Best SF of the 1980s. Unfortunately, it also contains a few ‘average’ tales and one story that I DNF’d (Avram Davidson - always Avram Davison.)
The Great Stories:
Dogfight • (1985) • novelette by William Gibson and Michael Swanwick. A classic masterpiece of Cyberpunk. A small time crook becomes a master as a virtual game of airplane dogfights. He also befriends a wealthy young woman. Their lives collide in tragic ways.
The Fringe • (1985) • novelette by Orson Scott Card. There is such humanity in Card’s work. A handicapped teacher on the frontier is terrorized by his students after he reported their criminal parents to the authorities. Raw, dangerous, human, and with some real courage and hope.
Sailing to Byzantium • (1985) • novella by Robert Silverberg. One of the greatest stories of the far future. A man from the 20th century is transported to far far future where people build and explore cities of the past. A wealth of lush detail, believably strange situations, and deep worth-building. This is an hypnotic epic.
Out of All Them Bright Stars • (1985) • short story by Nancy Kress. Brief and full of import. A waitress in a diner serves an alien, but learns a hard truth about humanity that she never wanted to know. One of those stories that transcend the genre and could be enjoyed by anyone who loves literature.
The Only Neat Thing to Do • (1985) • novella by James Tiptree, Jr. A young woman joyrides through space, solves a mystery, meets an alien, and has to make some very hard decisions. A fun and mysterious piece of space opera that slowly turns into something you don’t expect.
A Spanish Lesson • (1985) • novelette by Lucius Shepard. What starts as a memoir of a bohemian life in Spain, becomes a mysterious investigation of the neighbors, and explodes to a weird tale of alternate universe Hilter and weird monsters.
Green Mars • (1985) • novella by Kim Stanley Robinson. This is a story of mountain climbing on Mars’ highest mountain, but there is a hell of a lot of interesting character develop going on behind the scenes. The adventure of the climb is riveting, suspenseful, and full of more thrilling detail than I thought possible. Really special stuff.
***
THE YEAR’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION: THIRD ANNUAL COLLECTION IS RATED 81%.
24 STORIES : 7 GREAT / 9 GOOD / 7 AVERAGE / 0 POOR / 1 DNF
The Jaguar Hunter • (1985) • novelette by Lucius Shepard
Good. Magical Realism of a man sent to fight a Jaguar to save his family.
Dogfight • (1985) • novelette by William Gibson and Michael Swanwick
Great. A cyberpunk classic of a small-time crook who is an expert at a game of virtual dogfights (the airplane kind) and his friendship with a wealthy college girl.
Fermi and Frost • (1985) • short story by Frederik Pohl
Average. A thought experiment of life during a nuclear winter.
Green Days in Brunei • (1985) • novella by Bruce Sterling
Good. A cyberpunk thriller of a tech guy who finds love and violence in a country that is resisting technology.
Snow • (1985) • short story by John Crowley
Good. A man remembers his old lover in video snippets recorded and preserved by a video “Wasp.”
The Fringe • (1985) • novelette by Orson Scott Card
Great. A powerfully emotional story. On the fringes of civilization, a handicapped teachers terrorized by his students because he turned their criminal fathers in to the authorities.
The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things • (1985) • short story by Karen Joy Fowler
Average. A woman engages in virtual reality therapy to deal with emotional pain around an ex-lover who died in Vietnam.
Sailing to Byzantium • (1985) • novella by Robert Silverberg
Great. A masterful far future novella, in which a man of The Present is whisked to the 50th Century and explores love, life, and touristic leisure.
Solstice • (1985) • novelette by James Patrick Kelly
Good. A tight and nasty little thriller featuring a drug designer, cloning, and Stonehenge.
Duke Pasquale's Ring • (1985) • novella by Avram Davidson
DNF. Another bit of unreadable fantasy drivel from an author that doesn’t connect with my aesthetics at all.
More Than the Sum of His Parts • (1985) • short story by Joe Haldeman
Average. A damaged man is put together with robotic parts - including sexual ones - and spirals into violence and sadism.
Out of All Them Bright Stars • (1985) • short story by Nancy Kress
Great. When a waitress in a diner meeting an alien, she learns things about humanity that she’d rather never have learned.
Side Effects • (1985) • novelette by Walter Jon Williams
Average. A barely SF story about a corrupt doctor doing clinical trials with prescription drugs.
The Only Neat Thing to Do • (1985) • novella by James Tiptree, Jr.
Great. Thrilling and heart-wrenching at once. A young woman out for fun adventure in her spaceship comes across alien life that lives in her head —- and is forced to make some very difficult decisions.
Dinner in Audoghast • (1985) • short story by Bruce Sterling
Good. Sumptuous story of dinner and fortune telling in an ancient forgotten Arab-African city.
Under Siege • (1985) • novelette by George R. R. Martin
Good. Cool time travel story about a geek mutant who embodies a man in 1808 to attempt to stop the devastation of the Soviet Union by changing a siege in the past.
Flying Saucer Rock & Roll • (1985) • novelette by Howard Waldrop
Average. Violent Doo-Wop gangs, concerts, blackouts, drinking piss, and maybe some aliens.
A Spanish Lesson • (1985) • novelette by Lucius Shepard
Great. A countercultural young man befriends his neighbors in Spain, which ultimately leads to portals to another world full of alternate dystopian Hitler.
Roadside Rescue • (1985) • short story by Pat Cadigan
Good. A kinky tale of an alien who helps a man with his broken down car.
Paper Dragons • (1985) • novelette by James P. Blaylock
Good. Slipstream crazy with giant crabs, steampunkish dragons, tinkerers, and the California coast.
Magazine Section • (1985) • short story by R. A. Lafferty
Average. Quirky story of a man writing “true tall tales” in various newspapers.
The War at Home • (1985) • short story by Lewis Shiner
Average. Americans who didn’t fight in Vietnam, start getting flashbacks and PTSD about the war.
Rockabye Baby • (1985) • novelette by S. C. Sykes
Good. Parapalegic man discovers a new life after his injury. A friend at the inpatient facility may have a way to be healed, but at very high cost.
Green Mars • (1985) • novella by Kim Stanley Robinson
Great. Incredibly detailed and suspenseful story of mountain climbing Mars’ highest peak.
RATED 81% POSITIVE. STORY SCORE 3.83
24 STORIES : 7 GREAT / 9 GOOD / 7 AVERAGE / 0 POOR / 1 DNF
It is fitting that this anthology ends with Kim Stanley Robinson’s masterful tale of mountain climbing on Mars, for this is a collection with some soaring peaks. Some of these stories would be considered on any list of Best SF of the 1980s. Unfortunately, it also contains a few ‘average’ tales and one story that I DNF’d (Avram Davidson - always Avram Davison.)
The Great Stories:
Dogfight • (1985) • novelette by William Gibson and Michael Swanwick. A classic masterpiece of Cyberpunk. A small time crook becomes a master as a virtual game of airplane dogfights. He also befriends a wealthy young woman. Their lives collide in tragic ways.
The Fringe • (1985) • novelette by Orson Scott Card. There is such humanity in Card’s work. A handicapped teacher on the frontier is terrorized by his students after he reported their criminal parents to the authorities. Raw, dangerous, human, and with some real courage and hope.
Sailing to Byzantium • (1985) • novella by Robert Silverberg. One of the greatest stories of the far future. A man from the 20th century is transported to far far future where people build and explore cities of the past. A wealth of lush detail, believably strange situations, and deep worth-building. This is an hypnotic epic.
Out of All Them Bright Stars • (1985) • short story by Nancy Kress. Brief and full of import. A waitress in a diner serves an alien, but learns a hard truth about humanity that she never wanted to know. One of those stories that transcend the genre and could be enjoyed by anyone who loves literature.
The Only Neat Thing to Do • (1985) • novella by James Tiptree, Jr. A young woman joyrides through space, solves a mystery, meets an alien, and has to make some very hard decisions. A fun and mysterious piece of space opera that slowly turns into something you don’t expect.
A Spanish Lesson • (1985) • novelette by Lucius Shepard. What starts as a memoir of a bohemian life in Spain, becomes a mysterious investigation of the neighbors, and explodes to a weird tale of alternate universe Hilter and weird monsters.
Green Mars • (1985) • novella by Kim Stanley Robinson. This is a story of mountain climbing on Mars’ highest mountain, but there is a hell of a lot of interesting character develop going on behind the scenes. The adventure of the climb is riveting, suspenseful, and full of more thrilling detail than I thought possible. Really special stuff.
***
THE YEAR’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION: THIRD ANNUAL COLLECTION IS RATED 81%.
24 STORIES : 7 GREAT / 9 GOOD / 7 AVERAGE / 0 POOR / 1 DNF
The Jaguar Hunter • (1985) • novelette by Lucius Shepard
Good. Magical Realism of a man sent to fight a Jaguar to save his family.
Dogfight • (1985) • novelette by William Gibson and Michael Swanwick
Great. A cyberpunk classic of a small-time crook who is an expert at a game of virtual dogfights (the airplane kind) and his friendship with a wealthy college girl.
Fermi and Frost • (1985) • short story by Frederik Pohl
Average. A thought experiment of life during a nuclear winter.
Green Days in Brunei • (1985) • novella by Bruce Sterling
Good. A cyberpunk thriller of a tech guy who finds love and violence in a country that is resisting technology.
Snow • (1985) • short story by John Crowley
Good. A man remembers his old lover in video snippets recorded and preserved by a video “Wasp.”
The Fringe • (1985) • novelette by Orson Scott Card
Great. A powerfully emotional story. On the fringes of civilization, a handicapped teachers terrorized by his students because he turned their criminal fathers in to the authorities.
The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things • (1985) • short story by Karen Joy Fowler
Average. A woman engages in virtual reality therapy to deal with emotional pain around an ex-lover who died in Vietnam.
Sailing to Byzantium • (1985) • novella by Robert Silverberg
Great. A masterful far future novella, in which a man of The Present is whisked to the 50th Century and explores love, life, and touristic leisure.
Solstice • (1985) • novelette by James Patrick Kelly
Good. A tight and nasty little thriller featuring a drug designer, cloning, and Stonehenge.
Duke Pasquale's Ring • (1985) • novella by Avram Davidson
DNF. Another bit of unreadable fantasy drivel from an author that doesn’t connect with my aesthetics at all.
More Than the Sum of His Parts • (1985) • short story by Joe Haldeman
Average. A damaged man is put together with robotic parts - including sexual ones - and spirals into violence and sadism.
Out of All Them Bright Stars • (1985) • short story by Nancy Kress
Great. When a waitress in a diner meeting an alien, she learns things about humanity that she’d rather never have learned.
Side Effects • (1985) • novelette by Walter Jon Williams
Average. A barely SF story about a corrupt doctor doing clinical trials with prescription drugs.
The Only Neat Thing to Do • (1985) • novella by James Tiptree, Jr.
Great. Thrilling and heart-wrenching at once. A young woman out for fun adventure in her spaceship comes across alien life that lives in her head —- and is forced to make some very difficult decisions.
Dinner in Audoghast • (1985) • short story by Bruce Sterling
Good. Sumptuous story of dinner and fortune telling in an ancient forgotten Arab-African city.
Under Siege • (1985) • novelette by George R. R. Martin
Good. Cool time travel story about a geek mutant who embodies a man in 1808 to attempt to stop the devastation of the Soviet Union by changing a siege in the past.
Flying Saucer Rock & Roll • (1985) • novelette by Howard Waldrop
Average. Violent Doo-Wop gangs, concerts, blackouts, drinking piss, and maybe some aliens.
A Spanish Lesson • (1985) • novelette by Lucius Shepard
Great. A countercultural young man befriends his neighbors in Spain, which ultimately leads to portals to another world full of alternate dystopian Hitler.
Roadside Rescue • (1985) • short story by Pat Cadigan
Good. A kinky tale of an alien who helps a man with his broken down car.
Paper Dragons • (1985) • novelette by James P. Blaylock
Good. Slipstream crazy with giant crabs, steampunkish dragons, tinkerers, and the California coast.
Magazine Section • (1985) • short story by R. A. Lafferty
Average. Quirky story of a man writing “true tall tales” in various newspapers.
The War at Home • (1985) • short story by Lewis Shiner
Average. Americans who didn’t fight in Vietnam, start getting flashbacks and PTSD about the war.
Rockabye Baby • (1985) • novelette by S. C. Sykes
Good. Parapalegic man discovers a new life after his injury. A friend at the inpatient facility may have a way to be healed, but at very high cost.
Green Mars • (1985) • novella by Kim Stanley Robinson
Great. Incredibly detailed and suspenseful story of mountain climbing Mars’ highest peak.
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