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October 31, 2006
'It was right then when it hit me ...'
It was right then when it hit me, and I still dont really know why. It was as though Id turned a page in an until then incomprehensible story and suddenly found myself looking at the key to the whole thing, the piece of the puzzle around which everything else fitted ... All of them slipping smoothly into place and making beautiful sense, without a seam showing anywhere.p. 217
What if you had the power to change history? What if you had the power to do it and promote a bit of cultural justice - to take the unjustly obscure and nudge their opportunities one way or another or catch them right at the moment where they were going to take the glum fork in the road?
This story has somewhat the feel of "All You Zombies" or The Left Hand of Darkness, the same sense of the power of change and the same doubts about whether one person (no superhuman) can bring it about. (Like "All You Zombies" it is about time travel, like Left Hand of Darkness it is about how out-of-place advanced technology does (and doesnt) make a difference.)
The fact is we all have that power (and those doubts): over the present, over ourselves, and over all we come into contact with. This is a story for anyone who has ever loved something from the past: a book, a movie, a piece of music, a live recording, a work of art. This is a beautifully written story infused by that love, and with the cluelessness and foreknowledge that winds through LeGuins and Heinleins two works. I recommend it highly.
"Willies Blues" was published in the May 1972 issue of The Magazine of SF&F. It is mentioned in Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, and Science Fiction by Paul Nahin. Its author, Robert J. Tilley, is a musician, artist, and author. He has published one novel, The Big Losers (now out of print) and many mystery and SF short stories. There has never been an anthology of Tilleys work, although he has published since 1957 (scroll down): http://www.magicdragon.com/UltimateSF/authorsT.html
Yours,
LV
Next time: a short story by Vernor Vinge.
Posted by lisav at 10:55 PM
October 19, 2006
'In sorrow, in compassion, in absolute determination'
Wallace MacFarlane had a modest career and reportedly published a short story collection which is out of print.
'Changing Woman' is about a Jicarilla Apache-Navaho woman and a Blackfoot bush pilot who go to work for a secretive organization in the forestland near Cape Mendocino, CA.
This story, like the first one in this anthology, also derives its inspiration from mythology.
To say more would spoil what happens.
Next time, a story by Robert J. Tilley.
Yours,
LV
Posted by lisav at 10:31 PM
October 12, 2006
'Mercurial and Perverse'
Im leaving off Annual Worlds Best SF for the moment to discuss something else.
I was recently trying to describe to a friend how Fantasy is different from other types of fiction. I finally concluded that Fantasy uses the same kind of ethical thinking that fairy tales do .... in the Grimm fable, we know there will be consequences when the heroine washes and tends the three bloody heads and others who pass them do not. The same chill of foreboding does not attend a mystery novel detectives refusal to help a stranded motorist - the outcome could be neutral, or ironic, or it could contain a clue - but mystery is not the same genre (and does not happen in the same kind of universe) as Fantasy does and the rules are different.
Science Fiction isnt the same, I thought to myself .... but most of the SF I can think of is about the implications and consequences of technological change or scientific discovery. SF functions as a conscience in how we apply science .... sometimes the things it fears are or unlikely or unfounded (or in the case of skiffy, silly) but a lot of SF seems to ask, 'Wait, is this a good idea?'
At the same time I was mulling all this over a new book crossed my desk: Jez and I had decided to buy Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia for Sprague. The publishers web page looked promising, and the the author, Brian Stableford, is a well-known SF author (although there is no replacing Asimov for this kind of undertaking), but I asked to look at the book to see if it was really as promised.
Science Fact surveys how scientific discovery and science fiction have influenced each other, how each has opened new vistas for the other. The encyclopedia is heavy on the science (linguistics, exobiology, zoology, archaeology) and modest (but well-chosen) in its coverage of SF authors (Niven, Verne, Clarke.) I was immediately pleased that I couldnt evaluate most of the articles with my meager 101-level science education and I will be delighted to hear your responses to the articles that touch on what you know.
(One article I could evaluate, 'Mars' discussed the excitement created by Pietro Seccis 'canali', Mars as the setting of late 1800s fictional paradises and utopias, H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom, the pulp era, Bradburys Mars, the 1960s era real-world push to send piloted craft to Mars, the disappointment created by the Mariner and Viking data that showed a harsher Mars than had been anticipated, and how Mars as a dead planet influenced later SF (including visions of a terraformed Mars or modified humans.) SF reacted to these trends and ongoing Martian discoveries - with the occasional SFnal return to the old hope that Mars had sustained life. (The most recent fiction cited is from 2002 - so one wonders what recent reevaluations of water on Mars will do to future SF.) It is a thorough article with a broad acquaintance with SF - I couldnt think of a work it omitted and it mentioned several Id never heard of or had half-forgotten. (*kof* I need to re-read Wells.))
Other articles I sampled looked equally good and I recommend the rest of the book highly.
Science Fact even considered the very topic Id been mulling:
[In fiction] .... [t]he author not only has the power to determine on whom the rain falls, and when, but the authority to state without objection why characters do what they do. There is far less restriction on what can be stated in words than there is on what can happen in the world of experience, and fiction is therefore flexible in ways that the world of experience is not .... It is not only possible for the sun and the rain to discriminate between the just and the unjust, but perfectly routine .... Whereas science cannot deal with moral order, fiction must.pg. xx
As soon as Jez persuades me to stop reading the book, you can find Brian Stablefords Science Fact and Science Fiction on Spragues 1st Floor under -
SPR REF FOL
Q
123
S735
2006
Yours,
LV
Posted by lisav at 10:37 PM