Edited by Gardner Dozois
320 pages
Published 1990
Read from August 11 to August 14
Rating: 2.5 out of 5
For a long time — like, a couple decades — I’ve been trying to pin down the memory of this story I once read. I don’t know how I encountered it, how old I was, or where I read it. All I remembered was that there was a story published around the same time as Jurassic Park that, thanks to a fluke confluence of the genetic engineering and dinomania fads then fashionable in science fiction, just happened to be about cloned dinosaurs running amok in a remote corner of the modern world. The only specific detail I recalled was the story’s setting: the Okefenokee Swamp. This was not enough information to track it down.
A couple weeks ago I was browsing a directory of cover images from Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine back issues when I happened upon the cover for this issue. Raptors leaping at a Chinook helicopter — that felt familiar.
Sure enough, when I managed to track down a copy via eBay, the cover story proved to be the very story I’d been hoping to find all these years. And here it is:
“Trembling Earth” by Allen Steele. After all this time, I wasn't sure what to expect. Even though it was written independently of Jurassic Park, “Earth” is a technothriller novella that would have been right at home in Crichton’s oeuvre. The prose has a similar newspaper-reporter glibness; the characters are similarly flat. Beefy Vermont senator Petrie R. Chambliss, whom the Washington Post dubbed “the reincarnation of Teddy Roosevelt,” drags his horny aide Denny Steinberg and smarmy Secret Service agent Joe Gerhardt along for a canoe trip through the Deinonychus Observation Project in the heart of the Okefenokee. Naturally, things go wrong thanks to right-wing terrorists (perhaps the one detail of the future that sci-fi writers of this era always got correct — cf. Bones of the Earth by Michael Swanwick). The story is fine; I can see why it made such an impression on me in my youth, though nowadays it seems vacuous. I feel uncomfortable with the lascivious attention our protagonist Denny shows toward Tiffany Nixon, the lone female character, and especially dislike the way it ties into the climactic reveal. The “deinonychi” are weirdly identical to Crichton’s raptors: “Smart, fast-moving, and viciously, voraciously hungry, they were born killers…” One of Steele’s cleverer touches is naming the three deinonychi Freddie, Jason, and Michael, making their slasher pedigree explicit. C-
So how's the rest of the issue? Well, it’s big — a lot of pages to get through. And story number two is not a promising sign.
“The Time Traveler” by Isaac Asimov. Ugh. Another Azazel story from Asimov, as if the other one I read weren’t awful enough. Out of the myriad avenues Asimov could select to explore his misogyny, here he picks the expedient of scarcely acknowledging women exist. The story is couched in the overly-wordy irony that “intellectual” white men on the internet considered the highest manifestation of humor back in the ’00s: “Quackbrain will spend his last few remaining years unable to avenge the snubs and spurnings he has received from villains in the past, villains who did not perceive, let alone appreciate, his great talents.” There isn’t much to this puff of self-indulgence — not even enough to truly loathe it. Maybe D-?
As a palate-cleanser, we have “On Gravity and Perpetual Motion,” an enjoyable poem from David Lunde.
“Box of Light” by John Griesemer. I’ll need another palate-cleanser after this one. It's a skillfully written but dreary drugs-and-exploitation piece, the kind that cis-het white dudes swan over, thinking they're being so gritty and artistic; the kind of writing that ultimately has nothing to say beyond “Look at me being gritty and artistic!” So: our narrator is an unnamed actress who's landed a big role, shooting a film in Florida. Keith, the director, is angry she won't sleep with him, and turns everyone on set against her. Her agent Alex (who is also her boyfriend) flies down to “protect” her. Because the author is white and this is the ’90s, Alex is Black and inevitably into voodoo; against her will, he has some blood magic done on her out in the swamps. The moral is people want power, and big men like big power. F+
There are two reasons I dislike it when privileged demographics write this sort of story. One, it's exploitative, wringing publication from someone else's trauma (and a white author might not notice, say, the Birth of a Nation stench around Alex's treatment of the actress).
The second reason is, it's boring. This literary edgelordism has nothing interesting to say. The big insight in this story amounts to “There are power imbalances in the system.” Imagine if a queer writer of the global majority were asked to write this same plot from scratch. That story would be informed by actual experience with those marginalizations. And most assuredly it wouldn't be content with “There are power imbalances in the system.” Anyway...
“Getting the Bugs Out” by Janet Kagan. This is a refreshingly domestic novelette about colonists on planet Mirabile who are galvanized into action when they discover that Earth mosquitos have been introduced into their world. I enjoyed the North Woods vibe of Mirabile and its introduced fauna; narrator Annie, a.k.a Mama Jason, premier genetic scientist of Loch Moose, feels almost like a leader of a Girl Scout troop, which is a delightful new angle for this kind of story. “Bugs” is a leisurely affair. Apparently third in a series with these characters, it feels like it’s meant to be an extended hangout with familiar faces, which probably would’ve worked better if I’d known the characters beforehand. I also would have appreciated more sensory detail of Mirabile. I enjoyed “Bugs” anyway — maybe thanks to the sheer contrast with the preceding story. B
Another slight, competent poem: “Suddenly” by Vivian Vande Velde.
“Liz and Diego” by Richard Paul Russo. Ah, the ’90s. When an otherwise perfectly serviceable tale of two older people scavenging alien technology from ruined villages in war-torn Latin America — Cocoon meets Predator, with a pinch of Stand by Me — could get derailed by a randomly incestuous backstory. It’s almost comical, the way we gotta meet that shock value quota. Could’ve been pretty adequate otherwise. Oh well. D+
“The Place of No Shadows” by Alexander Jablokov. Boston has become an interstellar melting pot. Students and sages from a hundred worlds have converged on Boston’s divinity schools and universities, seeking philosophy and debating perceptions of truth even as the sea rises and slowly claims the city. That’s a cool setting for a story. Unfortunately, this story didn’t do much for me. The prose was flat; the two main characters barely registered enough for me to keep them straight. The tenor of the piece feels anti-immigrant, its viewpoint along the lines of “You risk losing your own identity when multiculturalism runs amok.” (Weird note: a secondary character is a Cambodian immigrant who, in her youth, was a speedboat raider based in Hull; she feels like she stepped right out of D. Alexander Smith’s “Dying in Hull,” in the November 1988 IASF. Clearly, during this brief window of time, there was some cultural archetype — or maybe just an anxiety shared by dudes named Alexander — regarding Cambodian speedboat pirates based in Hull, Massachusetts.) The best part of this story is the line “[He] wondered why someone would come light years to become an Episcopalian.” D+
Another poem here, “Primate Primer” by Ace G. Pilkington, which goes all in on that “violence is our inborn ape heritage” shit that the 20th century instilled in so many cynical masculine imaginations. Didn’t like it. I did find it amusing that you can rearrange some letters from the author's name to spell ape go kiling. That was more interesting than the poem.
“Reunion” by Melanie Tem. Heavy and grief-burdened, this story wallows in the pain, disappointments, abuses, and losses endured by a group of women reuniting for a sleepover to observe turning 40. As a 40 year old myself, weighed down with plenty of grief and disappointment and past abuse, I found myself sympathetic to this story, but also a touch overwhelmed by it. That's a lot of pages to sustain a threnody. There were some iffy, dated bits, too. But overall, I appreciate what Tem was trying to do. Mostly. C
I’m beginning to think a double issue from 1990 is altogether too much IASF from 1990.
“The Utility Man” by Robert Reed. Reed, staple of pro sci-fi markets for the last three decades, made his IASF debut with this entry. It’s predictably solid. Cetians have been integrating themselves into every walk of human life in order to assess our species before giving us access to their technologies. Miller is a bookish man who had to take a factory job to pay the bills, and never felt he fit in with the blue collar world. He’s excited when a Cetian takes a job at the factory, hoping the alien will gravitate toward him as a kindred mind and accept him as a friend, someone who will appreciate him, unlike these “sweatshop goons.” As someone with terrible social skills, someone who never clicked anywhere, someone who was a superior dickhead through most of my twenties, this story cuts close to my (undiagnosed but plausibly) autistic heart. B
“Eternity, Baby” by Andrew Weiner. Words I always dread to read: “[T]he following story was inspired by the rock ’n’ roll industry…” The story itself is a tale of heterosexual obsession (uninteresting), Baby Boomer nostalgia (unrelatable), and the slow unraveling of things (all too relatable). The narration reads like a Cliff’s Notes summation of a much longer and more tedious manuscript. It ends as these things always do, in a spectral knife fight with the manifestation of the idealized girl you conjured up from your teenage puppy love. D-
“The Two Janets” by Terry Bisson. This is from the same period when Bisson published “Bears Discover Fire” (which I read and reviewed here), so I had high hopes for this one. It turns out to be an airy bit of strangeness about hometowns and our inability to lead two lives. Narrator Janet left Owensboro, Kentucky, for New York City to try to break into the publishing industry. But her mother, her hometown best friend (also named Janet), and her ex-fiancée Alan all call to tell her that literary luminaries like John Updike, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth are all busy moving to Owensboro. Charming. B
A brief poem, “Under the Ice Lies Montpelier” by Scott E. Green, sketches an image of the returning Ice Age — a trope far more prevalent in the 1970s, before we had a more definite idea of where climate change would take our planet. I found the poem mediocre aside from the lovely, steampunkish line “Wolves pace blimp shadows.”
“A Short, Sharp Shock” by Kim Stanley Robinson. Somehow, the only other thing I’ve ever read from Robinson was a middling humorous piece, “Zürich,” in the March 1990 F&SF. I’d intended to read his Mars trilogy for the last 25 years or so, but never got around to it. “Shock” is an extended immersion in a vast world that feels remarkably like the California coast. Our protagonist wakes in the midst of nearly drowning, and finds himself with two certainties: amnesia, and a woman he recognizes on some deep level. In the night, the woman falls into the clutches of the “spine kings,” and our man climbs the high ridge encircling the world in search of her. Gorgeous descriptions and entrancingly strange worldbuilding help elevate it from that unpromising start. (I think amnesia as a trope is wearily overplayed, best relegated to the 1950s where it belongs.) There’s a tinge of sword & sorcery to the land, a hint of Sir John Mandeville in its myriad peoples. Yet I could easily imagine “Shock” getting published in the 2010s. It’s vast and weird and lovely, and I think it’s the best thing in this issue — one of the better stories I’ve read from the 1990s, in fact. A-
And that’s it! Not my favorite issue — in fact, it’s something of a step down from the November 1988 IASF. I think that’s wholly due to my personal tastes, though. Many of the stories here were quite well written; they just did nothing for me. On the other hand, Robinson's novella was better than anything in that issue.
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