The Year's Best SF 08 # 1990 Read online

  On television, The Sci-Fi Channel, the proposed new cable channel, was again talked about all year, with expensive glossy ads for it appearing in magazines like Playboy and Omni, but, once again, it had not actually materialized by the time I had to sit down to write this Summation; maybe next year. Either Star Trek: The Next Generation has improved or I’m more forgiving of it now, but I enjoyed it more this year than I did the last two years—it’s still fundamentally silly, of course, by the standards of print science fiction, but it has been entertaining, with fairly adult character development in a few of the shows, the production values are quite good, and the special effects occasionally stunning for television, light years ahead of those in the original Star Trek series; one or two of the cast can actually even act … although not all of them, by any means. Alien Nation has died and Quantum Leap is rumored to be ailing. The Flash seems to be doing pretty well so far in the ratings, but I can’t work up much enthusiasm for it. I like The Simpsons well enough—but apparently not nearly as much as I’m supposed to like it, judging from the nationwide cult hysteria it has whipped up. I have yet to buy a Bart Simpson T-shirt, for instance, in spite of countless blandishments to do so on every street corner and in every shopping mall. Grump, grump.

  * * *

  The Forty-eighth World Science Fiction Convention, ConFiction, was held in The Hague, Holland, from August 23 to August 27, 1990, and drew an estimated attendance of 3,000. The 1990 Hugo Awards, presented at Noreascon Three, were: Best Novel, Hyperion, by Dan Simmons; Best Novella, “The Mountains of Mourning,” by Lois McMaster Bujold; Best Novelette, “Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another,” by Robert Silverberg; Best Short Story, “Boobs,” by Suzy McKee Charnas; Best Nonfiction, The World Beyond the Hill, by Alexei Panshin and Cory Panshin; Best Professional Editor, Gardner Dozois; Best Professional Artist, Don Maitz; Best Original Artwork, “Rimrunners,” by Don Maitz; Best Dramatic Presentation, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade; Best Semiprozine, Locus; Best Fanzine, The Mad 3 Party, edited by Leslie Turek; Best Fan Writer, David Langford; Best Fan Artist, Stu Shiffman; plus the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer to Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

  The 1989 Nebula Awards, presented at a banquet at the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero Hotel in San Francisco, California, on April 28, 1990, were: Best Novel, The Healer’s War, by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough; Best Novella, “The Mountains of Mourning,” by Lois McMaster Bujold; Best Novelette, “At the Rialto,” by Connie Willis; and Best Short Story, “Ripples in the Dirac Sea,” by Geoffrey A. Landis.

  The World Fantasy Awards, presented at the Sixteenth Annual World Fantasy Convention in Chicago, Illinois, on November 4, 1990, were: Best Novel, Lyonesse: Madouc, by Jack Vance; Best Novella, “Great Work of Time,” by John Crowley; Best Short Story, “The Illusionist,” by Steven Millhauser; Best Collection, Richard Matheson: Collected Stories, by Richard Matheson; Best Anthology, The Year’s Best Fantasy: Second Annual Collection, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling; Best Artist, Thomas Canty; Special Award (Professional), Mark Ziesing Publications; Special Award (Nonprofessional), Grue Magazine, edited by Peggy Nadramia; plus a Life Achievement Award to R. A. Lafferty.

  The 1990 Bram Stoker Awards, presented in Providence, Rhode Island, during the weekend of June 22–24, 1990, by The Horror Writers of America, were: Best Novel, Carrion Comfort, by Dan Simmons; Best First Novel, Sunglasses After Dark, by Nancy A. Collins; Best Collection, Richard Matheson: Collected Stories, by Richard Matheson; Best Novella/Novelette, “On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert With Dead Folks;” by Joe R. Lansdale; Best Short Story, “Eat Me,” by Robert R. McCammon; Best Nonfiction, Harlan Ellison’s Watching, by Harlan Ellison and Horror: The 100 Best Books, edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman (tie).

  The 1989 John W. Campbell Memorial Award–winner was The Child Garden, by Geoff Ryman.

  The 1989 Theodore Sturgeon Award was won by “The Edge of the World,” by Michael Swanwick.

  The 1989 Philip K. Dick Memorial Award–winner was Subterranean Gallery, by Richard Paul Russo.

  The Arthur C. Clarke award was won by The Child Garden, by Geoff Ryman.

  * * *

  Dead in 1990 were: Donald A. Wollheim, 76, editor, publisher, author, anthologist, fan, one of the major shaping forces on modern science fiction for more than fifty years—among many other accomplishments, he edited the first mass market SF anthology, the first all-original SF anthology, and the first anthology series, masterminded the first SF convention, helped establish SF as a legitimate part of the paperback publishing scene in the fifties as editor of Ace Books, edited one of the longest-running “Best of the Year” anthology series, and, in the seventies, was the founder and first editor of a successful new publishing house, DAW Books; Wilmar H. Shiras, 82, author of the classic story “In Hiding” and its sequels, collected in Children of the Atom; Roald Dahl, 74, well-known writer of macabre fiction and children’s books; Lawrence Durrell, 78, British novelist, author of the “Alexandria Quartet”; Joseph Payne Brennan, 71, poet and writer of supernatural fiction; Walker Percy, 73, author of Love in the Ruins, winner of the National Book Award; Manuel Puig, 57, magic realist writer; Win Gijsen, 57, prominent Dutch SF author; Anya Seton, 86, writer of Gothics and of historical novels; José Durand, 64, magic realist writer; Charles Spain Verral, 85, veteran author and illustrator; Carl Sherrell, 60, fantasy writer and commercial artist; Henrik Dahl Juve, 89, veteran pulp writer; Helen Hoke Watts, 86, writer and anthologist; John Fuller, 76, author of “unexplained phenomena” books such as Incident at Exeter; Stephen Frances, 72, writer and publisher; Lisa Novak, 30, Bantam Spectra editor, murdered along with her husband, Greg Peretz; Donald Hutter, 57, veteran book editor; Ed Emshwiller, 65, Hugo-winning SF artist and well-known experimental filmmaker; Harry Altshuler, 77, well-known literary agent; Arthur “Atom” Thomson, 62, well-known fan artist and cartoonist; B. Klíban, 55, famous cartoonist, creator of such bestselling cartoon books as Cat, Tiny Footprints, and Whack Your Porcupine; Jim Henson, 53, internationally renowned puppeteer, creator of The Muppets; Mary Martin, 76, musical comedy star, probably best known to the genre audience for her role as Peter Pan; David Rappoport, 38, British film actor, probably best-known to the genre audience for his role in Time Bandits; Gertrude Asimov, 73, former wife of writer Isaac Asimov; Cora Walters, 75, mother of SF illustrator Robert Walters; Rick Sneary, 63, longtime fan and fanzine publisher; Elizabeth Pearse, 61, longtime fan and art show director; and Don C. Thompson, 63, longtime fan, fanzine publisher, and DenVention II co-chairman.

  JAMES PATRICK KELLY

  Mr. Boy

  F. Scott Fitzgerald told us long ago that the rich were not like you and me, but it takes the pyrotechnic and wildly inventive story that follows, one of the year’s most powerful and exciting novellas, to demonstrate just how unlike us they could eventually become …

  Like his friend and frequent collaborator John Kessel, James Patrick Kelly made his first sale in 1975, and went on to become one of the most respected and prominent new writers of the ’80s. Although his most recent solo novel, Look into the Sun, was well-received, Kelly has had more impact to date as a writer of short fiction than as a novelist, and, indeed, Kelly stories such as “Solstice,” “The Prisoner of Chillon,” “Glass Cloud,” “Rat,” and “Home Front” must be ranked among the most inventive and memorable short works of the decade. Kelly’s first solo novel, the mostly ignored Planet of Whispers, came out in 1984. It was followed by Freedom Beach, a novel written in collaboration with John Kessel. His story “Friend,” also in collaboration with Kessel, was in our Second Annual Collection; his “Solstice” was in our Third Annual Collection; his “The Prisoner of Chillon” was in our Fourth Annual Collection; his “Glass Cloud” was in our Fifth Annual Collection; and his “Home Front” was in our Sixth Annual Collection. Born in Mineola, New York, Kelly now lives in Durham, New Hampshire, the setting for several of his stories, where he’s reported to be at work on a third solo novel, Wildlife.

  Mr. Bo
y

  JAMES PATRICK KELLY

  I was already twitching by the time they strapped me down. Nasty pleasure and beautiful pain crackled through me, branching and rebranching like lightning. Extreme feelings are hard to tell apart when you have endorphins spilling across your brain. Another spasm shot down my legs and curled my toes. I moaned. The stiffs wore surgical masks that hid their mouths, but I knew that they were smiling. They hated me because my mom could afford to have me stunted. When I really was just a kid I did not understand that. Now I hated them back; it helped me get through the therapy. We had a very clean transaction going here. No secrets between us.

  Even though it hurts, getting stunted is still the ultimate flash. As I unlived my life, I overdosed on dying feelings and experiences. My body was not big enough to hold them all; I thought I was going to explode. I must have screamed because I could see the laugh lines crinkling around the stiffs’ eyes. You do not have to worry about laugh lines after they twank your genes and reset your mitotic limits. My face was smooth and I was going to be twelve years old forever, or at least as long as Mom kept paying for my rejuvenation.

  I giggled as the short one leaned over me and pricked her catheter into my neck. Even through the mask, I could smell her breath. She reeked of dead meat.

  * * *

  Getting stunted always left me wobbly and thick, but this time I felt like last Tuesday’s pizza. One of the stiffs had to roll me out of recovery in a wheelchair.

  The lobby looked like a furniture showroom. Even the plants had been newly waxed. There was nothing to remind the clients that they were bags of blood and piss. You are all biological machines now, said the lobby, clean as space station lettuce. A scattering of people sat on the hard chairs. Stennie and Comrade were fidgeting by the elevators. They looked as if they were thinking of rearranging the furniture—like maybe into a pile in the middle of the room. Even before they waved, the stiff seemed to know that they were waiting for me.

  Comrade smiled. “Zdrast’ye.”

  “You okay, Mr. Boy?” said Stennie. Stennie was a grapefruit yellow stenonychosaurus with a brown underbelly. His razor-clawed toes clicked against the slate floor as he walked.

  “He’s still a little weak,” said the stiff, as he set the chair’s parking brake. He strained to act nonchalant, not realizing that Stennie enjoys being stared at. “He needs rest. Are you his brother?” he said to Comrade.

  Comrade appeared to be a teenaged spike neck with a head of silky black hair that hung to his waist. He wore a window coat on which twenty-three different talking heads chattered. He could pass for human, even though he was really a Panasonic. “Nyet,” said Comrade. “I’m just another one of his hallucinations.”

  The poor stiff gave him a dry nervous cough that might have been meant as a chuckle. He was probably wondering whether Stennie wanted to take me home or eat me for lunch. I always thought that the way Stennie got reshaped was more funny-looking than fierce—a python that had rear-ended an ostrich. But even though he was a head shorter than me, he did have enormous eyes and a mouthful of serrated teeth. He stopped next to the wheelchair and rose up to his full height. “I appreciate everything you’ve done.” Stennie offered the stiff his spindly three-fingered hand to shake. “Sorry if he caused any trouble.”

  The stiff took it gingerly, then shrieked and flew backwards. I mean, he jumped almost a meter off the floor. Everyone in the lobby turned and Stennie opened his hand and waved the joy buzzer. He slapped his tail against the slate in triumph. Stennie’s sense of humor was extreme, but then he was only thirteen years old.

  * * *

  Stennie’s parents had given him the Nissan Alpha for his twelfth birthday and we had been customizing it ever since. We installed blue mirror glass and Stennie painted scenes from the Late Cretaceous on the exterior body armor. We ripped out all the seats, put in a wall-to-wall gel mat and a fridge and a microwave and a screen and a mini-dish. Comrade had even done an illegal operation on the carbrain so that we could override in an emergency and actually steer the Alpha ourselves with a joystick. It would have been cramped, but we would have lived in Stennie’s car if our parents had let us.

  “You okay there, Mr. Boy?” said Stennie.

  “Mmm.” As I watched the trees whoosh past in the rain, I pretended that the car was standing still and the world was passing me by.

  “Think of something to do, okay?” Stennie had the car and all and he was fun to play with, but ideas were not his specialty. He was probably smart for a dinosaur. “I’m bored.”

  “Leave him alone, will you?” Comrade said.

  “He hasn’t said anything yet.” Stennie stretched and nudged me with his foot. “Say something.” He had legs like a horse: yellow skin stretched tight over long bones and stringy muscle.

  “Prosrees! He just had his genes twanked, you jack.” Comrade always took good care of me. Or tried to. “Remember what that’s like? He’s in damage control.”

  “Maybe I should go to socialization,” Stennie said. “Aren’t they having a dance this afternoon?”

  “You’re talking to me?” said the Alpha. “You haven’t earned enough learning credits to socialize. You’re a quiz behind and forty-five minutes short of E-class. You haven’t linked since…”

  “Just shut up and drive me over.” Stennie and the Alpha did not get along. He thought the car was too strict. “I’ll make up the plugging quiz, okay?” He probed a mess of empty juice boxes and snack wrappers with his foot. “Anyone see my comm anywhere?”

  Stennie’s schoolcomm was wedged behind my cushion. “You know,” I said, “I can’t take much more of this.” I leaned forward, wriggled it free and handed it over.

  “Of what, poputchik?” said Comrade. “Joyriding? Listening to the lizard here?”

  “Being stunted.”

  Stennie flipped up the screen of his comm and went on line with the school’s computer. “You guys help me, okay?” He retracted his claws and tapped at the oversized keyboard.

  “It’s extreme while you’re on the table,” I said, “but now I feel empty. Like I’ve lost myself.”

  “You’ll get over it,” said Stennie. “First question: Brand name of the first wiseguys sold for home use?”

  “NEC-Bots, of course,” said Comrade.

  “Geneva? It got nuked, right?”

  “Da.”

  “Haile Selassie was that king of Egypt who the Marleys claim is god, right? Name the Cold Wars: Nicaragua, Angola … Korea was the first.” Typing was hard work for Stennie; he did not have enough fingers for it. “One was something like Venezuela. Or something.”

  “Sure it wasn’t Venice?”

  “Or Venus?” I said, but Stennie was not paying attention.

  “All right, I know that one. And that. The Sovs built the first space station. Ronald Reagan—he was the president who dropped the bomb?”

  Comrade reached inside of his coat and pulled out an envelope. “I got you something, Mr. Boy. A get well present for your collection.”

  I opened it and scoped a picture of a naked dead fat man on a stainless steel table. The print had a DI verification grid on it, which meant this was the real thing, not a composite. Just above the corpse’s left eye there was a neat hole. It was rimmed with purple which had faded to bruise blue. He had curly gray hair on his head and chest, skin the color of dried mayonnaise and a wonderfully complicated penis graft. He looked relieved to be dead. “Who was he?” I liked Comrade’s present. It was extreme.

  “CEO of Infoline. He had the wife, you know, the one who stole all the money so she could download herself into a computer.”

  I shivered as I stared at the dead man. I could hear myself breathing and feel the blood squirting through my arteries. “Didn’t they turn her off?” I said. This was the kind of stuff we were not even supposed to imagine, much less look at. Too bad they had cleaned him up. “How much did this cost me?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Hey!” Ste
nnie thumped his tail against the side of the car. “I’m taking a quiz here and you guys are drooling over porn. When was the First World Depression?”

  “Who cares?” I slipped the picture back into the envelope and grinned at Comrade.

  “Well, let me see then.” Stennie snatched the envelope. “You know what I think, Mr. Boy? I think this corpse jag you’re on is kind of sick. Besides, you’re going to get in trouble if you let Comrade keep breaking laws. Isn’t this picture private?”

  “Privacy is twentieth century thinking. It’s all information, Stennie, and information should be accessible.” I held out my hand. “But if glasnost bothers you, give it up.” I wiggled my fingers.