SubscribeAny book that says it’s the best of a particular year is a bit misleading, but it cannot be helped. This book includes the best Science Fiction short stores printed in magazines in the year 2006. These compilations are always a year behind themselves, due to their very nature.
Most of the time when I read these kinds of compilations I find one or two stories that I love, a few that I found a bit interesting, and a whole lot of stuff that isn’t at all what I hoped to find. I usually end up skipping over many of the stories after reading about halfway through each, and having it fail to catch my interest despite my efforts to give it every chance to entertain me. Not so with this book, however! For the first time, I found myself really enjoying all the stories. Very impressive! If you have not yet picked up a copy of “the best science fiction” for any year yet, and were considering giving one a read just to see what it’s all about, I recommend this particular compilation. It’s well worth it.
At the very beginning of this book is an introduction by the editor that describes some of his thought processes involved in making the decisions about what stories to include, and which ones to leave out. It seems there was a whole lot of good Sci-Fi to pick from this time. I found the introduction to be interesting, but you can skip over it if you want to, without losing anything from the individual stories. I won’t go into every story from this book in this review, although I could, because they were all so good this time. Instead, I will focus on just a few of my favorite ones.
“Okanoggan Falls” by Carolyn Ives Gilman describes life in a small American town after a race of aliens have taken over the country, (and possibly the world as well). America is occupied by bipedal aliens that look almost as if they are made of stone. They don’t eat, they don’t drink much water, and, for the most part, they don’t want to really get too close to the humans. The humans, of course, resent this occupying force, but are powerless against them. This is not a story of oppression, but rather of hope. One brave woman in one small town sets out to try and make the two sides get along. She focuses her attentions on the alien who has been placed in charge of her town, right after he announces that everyone is going to have to move. The aliens are interested in the rock lying beneath the town. Susan tries to be nice to Captain Groton, inviting him over for dinner, and to town events. In the process she gets the deadline moved farther and farther back, hoping to save the town. In the process, Susan’s eyes are opened to how small minded and, well, “racist”, for lack of a better term, many of the people in her small American town are. This includes her husband and children, who make it clear that they don’t like how much time she spends with Captain Groton. The two become close, each influencing the other. Captain Groton is becoming more and more human as a result of his exposure to Susan and her town, and not at all in the way you might expect! There’s a bit of a twist on the more traditional story line of “woman loves an officer on the enemy side, Officer falls for woman, fate separates them forever”. This might be my favorite story in the entire book.
“Saving for a Sunny Day, or the Benefits of Reincarnation” by Ian Watson plays around with the implications of a society where controlled reincarnation is a fact. A sentient, supercomputer like force controls which souls get reincarnated, and into what kind of life. Debts are inherited, and so are fortunes. No one uses their riches to help the less fortunate, or the physically or mentally impaired, because, perhaps that soul was rich in a past life, and already had their turn. And besides, if someone is really in debt and physically disadvantaged in this life, well, that’s because they didn’t manage their finances well enough in their previous life. Children find out at a young age just how much they are going to inherit, (or how much debt they will carry from their past life), and make their life choices accordingly. What can you do to make a ton of money and pay off this debt? How much fun can you go have, since you are going to be fantastically wealthy this time around? Will you save for your next life, or blow it all this time around? I found this a very compelling concept to think about.
“Incarnation Day” by Walter Jon Williams presents a future where children are raised in virtual environments, and have to earn a physical body to incarnate into once they become adults. Told from the viewpoint of an adolescent girl who is still living virtually, working hard to become incarnated, and also trying to rebel like a “normal” teenager. This story touches on a whole lot of deep concepts. “Parents” can be a man and a woman who are married, or not married, or two people of the same sex, married or not. It costs a great deal of money to have a virtual child, and so, “Parents” can be a whole group of people who pull funds and efforts together to raise one. Whatever the situation, the Parents basically own the virtual child, and can decide to terminate the program whenever they want to. Is this murder, or property damage? Children grow up with a group of other virtual children, in order to give them a chance at learning how to socialize properly. Parents choose what the children will study, in an effort to give the child something valuable he or she can do for society once he or she becomes incarnated into a body. The children can choose whatever they want to look like, and change it around as often as we might change our icons on our chat programs. Oh, and it might not be a typically human body that they graduate into. This is a world where humans have adapted to living in space, and so, some have extra arms and no legs, to better navigate a weightless environment. The very concept of “human” is enlarged to include any body that thinks like a human. A virtual child could incarnate into a hairy bug like creature, and still be considered “human”. Lots of food for thought inside this story.
“Inclination” by William Shunn describes an odd religion that is followed by the main character who is living in space. The religion includes following the ideas behind “the great builder” and uses metaphors that involve “the six fundamental machines”. I found it interesting to see this isolated deeply religious teen interact in a larger society that doesn’t follow or respect his religion, and how he was affected by these new ideas. Something like a space age version of The Amish dropping into a very technologically entwined dominant society. I found this story interesting in it’s contrasts.
“A Billion Eves” by Robert Reed is a trippy story. Kala breaks into a sanctuary that is basically a time loop. Inside is the span of one day, lived over and over again for all it’s inhabitants, who are completely unaware of the reality they exist in. The sanctuary is a bubble that holds Seattle preserved in time before the wars that destroyed the rest of the world. Kala is searching for something, and chooses to stay stuck in this loop, reliving one perfect day over and over again forever. After the first loop, she will become like everyone else in the sanctuary, blissfully unaware that time is a loop and all these events happen over and over again.
Again, I thought all the stories inside this book were wonderful. I selected a few that I enjoyed the most to describe here, but that doesn’t mean I think you should skip over the rest of them. Short stories are nice little breaks, especially in between reading longer novels. If you are new to Sci-Fi and are looking for a taste of what it’s all about, this book is a great place to start. Long time fans of Sci-Fi will love it too.