Spanning some
eight-hundred and fifty pages, these stories contain enough material to
satisfy both the hard-core science fiction buff and the occasional
sci-fi reader with an avid taste for well-written literature. And
although the subtext here may be science, much attention is paid to its
effects on character development and the narrative. One will find here
science fiction stalwarts such as Margaret Atwood, Harlan Ellison,
Philip K. Dick as well as the lesser known voices of Diane Glancy, John
Kessel, and Lisa Goldstein. The
Document, for
example, a tale told in 200 words but rich in history and incident, or Street Value by
Frank Tallis, a robustly entertaining story set in a futuristic London
full of glitter and grime.
Among my
favorites was Harlan Ellison’s Strange Wine. In
this story of alternate worlds with a moral, (and a take-off on
Kafka’s The
Trial, where the accused doesn’t know what crime
he committed) an alien named Willis Kaw finds himself imprisoned in a
human body and cursed with an earthling’s familiar tragedies.
His daughter has been killed and his son is now crippled from an
accident. He and his wife do not love each other. When Willis sees a
psychiatrist, he tells him that he is imprisoned in his body because of
a crime he had committed on his mother planet. After the psychiatrist
advises him to become institutionalized until his delusions are cured,
Willis commits suicide, and is transferred back to his original
world.There, he asks a many-legged Consul why was he punished by being
sent to a horrible place such as earth where there is only pain. The
Consul tells him that on the contrary, he should have felt honored to
be sent to earth where life is sweet compared to the sufferings of
everywhere else in the universe. Kaw now remembers earth as sweet bliss
compared to life on his planet: “He remembered the rain, and
the sleep, and the feel of beach sand…Of life as Wilis Kaw,
life on the pleasure planet.”
Suffering in
the universe may be something quite relative.
Another
favorite was Philip K. Dick’s Frozen Journey. In
this story, a man lies in cryonic state of sleep aboard an interstellar
ship traveling to another planet. The irony here is that the ship
possess some computerized form of consciousness while trying to put its
human subject, Victor Kemmings, into a suspended state of happy
memories before landing. The problem is that Victor keeps contaminating
his own memories, often waking up in a fit of agony and despair. In an
effort to placate him, the ship arranges for him to meet his ex-wife,
Martene. During the reunion, his memories are so jumbled from the
botched cryonic sleep, that he can no longer recall anything with
accuracy. It’s both a humorous and cautionary tale of the
technological manipulation of human subjects and what might go awry.
But by far, my
favorite here was Joanna Russ’s A Few Things I Know About
Whileaway. Employing the techniques of montage, an
interview with an alien subject, and the creation of another world,
Russ seems to play with the idea that women need men. On Whileaway,
there are no men, only women, and what’s more, they can bear
children without impregnation by the opposite sex! With feminist
undertones, Russ creates an eerie picture of a world populated by
women, who are not only self-sufficient, having their own folklore and
traditions, but also who are very solipsistic. But a Whileawayan may
say the same about us.
One thing comes
across clear while reading these stories: No matter how far we travel
into outer space or how sophisticated our computers become, we will
always deal with the question of identity--Who am I? What light will
space travel or aliens throw on the mystery of my existence?
All in all,
these stories represent the best in science fiction writing over the
last thirty years of the twentieth century. They also represent not
only some fine sci-fi writing, but also great literature no matter the
genre.
