Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

Short Fiction Month Update:

I've delved into science fiction in the last couple of days. Ray Bradbury's "The Million Year Picnic" was a particularly fascinating story set on Mars; one of these days I really should delve deeper into Bradbury. (I've only read a handful of his short stories over the years.) Andre Norton's Mars story, "Mousetrap", puts an intriguing spin on the old "Prospector on Mars" bit. I also read two short ones by Arthur C. Clarke, an old favorite of mine whom I haven't read much in a long, long time: "The Secret", which involves some bit of mystery on the Moon (a plot device which might well have been partly recycled into 2001: A Space Odyssey), and "Reunion", a one-pager that takes the old idea that humans were originally "seeded" on Earth by aliens and gives it a little twist at the end that probably hit a lot harder in 1971, when the story first appeared, than now. (These stories are available in the second volume of The SFWA Grand Masters, a three-volume set that I find indispensible.)

Finally, I read a very impressive novella the other night: "The Chief Designer", by Andy Duncan. (I read it in The 19th Annual Year's Best Science Fiction, but the novella is also available on line.) This story explores the fascinating early days of spaceflight, from the vantage point not of the more familiar Americans (told in The Right Stuff, among other places) but that of the Soviets, focusing on the shadowy figure known to the West only as "The Chief Designer". This is the genius who, although totally unknown, always seemed to be one step ahead of the Americans in those early days of spaceflight. Duncan paints a thoroughly compelling portrait of this man that is, so far as I can tell, factually accurate, beginning with the rescue from the Stalin gulag of the political prisoner who would go on to become the driving force behind the Soviet Union's early dominance of the space race. Duncan's story is particularly moving in the way he manages to portray the Chief Designer's elusive nature, even to those who knew him.

Another fascinating story in the same Year's Best anthology is Maureen F. McHugh's "Interview: On Any Given Day", which takes the form of an interview with a teenage girl living in 2021. This story is notable for its extrapolation of a future world based on what the world right now looks like, and for the blending of such with attitudes and views that seem to be universal to teenagers, no matter when they live. (By the way, this year's round of Year's Best anthologies should start appearing sometime over the next month or so.)

Next up: I revisit Edgar Allan Poe's prose fiction.