Science Fiction is Growing Up

 kw: book reviews, science fiction, anthologies, short stories

This image doesn't illustrate any of the stories in The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 6, edited by Neil Clarke. I stumbled across the picture and it appealed to me. It isn't lost on me that everyone except the girl is in an environmental suit. Is it for the sake of the cheesecake? Or just a broad hint that this is on Earth, in some future time? I surmise the latter.

Of the 32 stories in The Best, for most, whether they take place on Earth isn't relevant. The ones I liked best presented new takes on writing from the viewpoint of The Other. "Exile's End", by Carolyn Ives Gilman, portrays two viewpoints equally deftly, that of an Ordinary Human (or a descendant thereof) and a descendant of humans who took to the stars so long ago that they are quasi-alien, and have a culture almost beyond the grasp of OH's. Crossing that divide is the crux of the story. "Tunnels" by Eleanor Arnason presents sympathetic aliens, including one who partners with the human protagonist because, as it tells her, "You saw me. You asked my name."

"Sinew and Steel and What They Told" by Carrie Vaughn presents a human so seriously modified (but all inside) it's hard to think he's still human. At the core, he is human, which makes all the difference in the end.

I am a musician who appreciates fine instruments. The luthier in "An Important Failure" by Rebecca Campbell spends a lifetime gathering the right tone woods and structural woods to make a violin, the first in centuries to compare on an equal basis with the famous violins of the 17th Century such as Amati and Stradivarius. In the author's view the secret to the fine sound of violins of this era is the climate, which was unusually cold for a century or two, producing trees with exceptionally fine grain. Even with the finest woods, it takes a violin about a century of frequent play to achieve its greatness. The milieu of the story is a warmer world that just doesn't grow fine-grained wood any more.

"Red_Bati" by Dilman Dila is the story of a robot dog with the body type of a red basenji. This dog has sufficient AI to create a "ghost" of a beloved human, as a companion, and to take over a spaceship (sorry for the spoiler). The author is one of several Desi (Indian subcontinent) authors in this volume. I found their stories particularly evocative.

Perhaps a quarter of the stories have a warmer Earth in their background. While I don't agree that "global warming" will proceed as far as the dire predictions of the IPCC, nor that its effects will be all bad, this is one area of speculation that richly rewards the investigation and mental experimentation that makes science fiction so great. "Textbooks in the Attic" by S.B. Divya sets the rich, in high-ground walled enclaves, against all others, in their flooded world, struggling to reinvent antibiotics while books that didn't get moved to attics fast enough rot away.

Science fiction before about 1965 was mostly of the "gee whiz" variety, though many great writers such as Arthur C. Clarke and Lester Del Rey wrote with much more sophistication. But many of my early favorites were the Lensman series and stories such as Venus Equilateral by George O. Smith, stories more about technology, with characters that were rather two-dimensional.

Later, as the "sexual revolution" got under way, triggered by court rulings that "porn is in the eye of the beholder", authors of all stripes, but particularly science fiction authors, went hog-wild. Most science fiction for the next generation seemed to be extended wet dreams, mainly by male authors airing their most erotic fantasies. I didn't read hardly any science fiction for many years, except to "check in" from time to time to see if it was wearing off. By about 2000 much had worn off, and writers were again exploring themes of greater breadth and wider interest. When I started this blog in 2005, I was again reading science fiction regularly, but only as about 10% of my "intake"; most of my reading for many years has been nonfiction, and most of that on scientific subjects. If you peruse this blog, you'll note quite a variety of subjects.

I am glad to note that I skipped only two stories in The Best, and that because of egregious violence, not overdone eroticism. I can again say, after reading most of the stories in this volume, "I am glad I read that."