Tag: 1991

Winter Solstice by Mike Resnick

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Winter Solstice by Mike Resnick (F&SF, October-November 1991) doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the Winter Solstice but, instead, tells of the wizard Merlin, who in this story is quite a different creature from the one of myth—a man experiencing his life in reverse, starting from a point in the far-future where he could “pass among the stars and galaxies”. Unfortunately, his memories are slipping away from him, so he is of little help when he is called upon to deal with the problems of the present:

An old woman comes to see me in the early afternoon. Her arm is torn and miscolored; the stench of it makes my eyes water; the flies are thick around her.
I cannot stand the pain any longer, Merlin, she weeps. It is like childbirth, but does not go away. You are my only hope, Merlin. Cast your mystic spell, charge me what you will, but make the pain cease.
I look at her arm, where the badger has ripped it with his claws, and I want to turn my head away and retch. I finally force myself to examine it. I have a sense that I need something—I am not sure what—something to attach to the front of my face; or, if not my whole face, then at least across my nose and mouth, but I cannot recall what it is.
The arm is swollen to almost twice its normal size, and although the wound is halfway between her elbow and her shoulder, she shrieks in agony when I gently manipulate her fingers. I want to give her something for her pain. Vague visions come to mind, images of something long and slender and needle-like flash briefly before my eyes. There must be something I can do, I think, something I can give her, some miracle that I employed when I was younger and the world was older, but I can no longer remember what it is. I must do more than mask her pain; this much I still know, for infection has set in. The smell becomes stronger as I probe, and she screams. Gang, I think suddenly: the word for her condition begins with gang—but there is another syllable, and I cannot recall it; and even if I could recall it, I can no longer cure it.  p. 134

The story is told in a near stream of consciousness style which yo-yos between Merlin’s fragmentary memories of the future and his present concerns, one of which is what to do, if anything, about Launcelot and his illicit affair with King Arthur’s wife, Guinevere. This particular problem comes to a head when (spoiler) Arthur seeks out Merlin for advice on the matter towards the end of the story. Merlin realises that Arthur is more worried about his own death, and this makes Merlin reflect on what the future (or past) holds for him:

I decided to try once more to look into the future, to put his mind at ease. I close my eyes and I peer ahead, and I see not a mindless, babbling old man, but a mindless, mewling baby, and that baby is myself.
Arthur tries to look ahead to the future he fears, and I, traveling in the opposite direction, look ahead to the future I fear, and I realize that there is no difference, that this is the humiliating state in which man both enters and leaves the world, and that he had better learn to cherish the time in between, for it is all that he has.  p. 142

Merlin finally tells Arthur that he will die the death he wants.
There isn’t really any story here, but it’s not a bad mood piece.
*** (Good). 5,050 words.

Miracle by Connie Willis

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Miracle by Connie Willis (Asimov’s Science Fiction, December 1991) gets off to a leisurely start with some office chit-chat about Christmas between the protagonist, Lauren, and one of her office colleagues, Evie, and this lays out most of the elements that will feature in this tale: two of their co-workers, Scott Buckley (“too cute to ever notice someone like me”), and Fred Hatch (“the fat guy in documentation”), and the movies Miracle on 34th Street and It’s Wonderful Life.
The final character in this Unknown-like fantasy appears when Lauren gets home, and she is door-stepped by an irritating young man saying he is there to give her a Christmas Present. Despite her shutting the door on him twice, he appears in the apartment:

The young man was sitting on the couch, messing with her TV remote. “So, what do you want for Christmas? A yacht? A pony?” He punched buttons on the remote, frowning. “A new TV?”
“How did you get in here?” Lauren said squeakily. She looked at the door. The deadbolt and chain were both still on.
“I’m a spirit,” he said, putting the remote down. The TV suddenly blared on. “The Spirit of Christmas Present.”
“Oh,” Lauren said, edging toward the phone. “Like in A Christmas Carol.”
“No,” he said, flipping through the channels. She looked at the remote. It was still on the coffee table. “Not Christmas Present. Christmas Present. You know, Barbie dolls, ugly ties, cheese logs, the stuff people give you for Christmas.”
“Oh, Christmas Present. I see,” Lauren said, carefully picking up the phone.
“People always get me confused with him, which is really insulting. I mean, the guy obviously has a really high cholesterol level. Anyway, I’m the Spirit of Christmas Present, and your sister sent me to—”
Lauren had dialed nine one. She stopped, her finger poised over the second one. “My sister?”
“Yeah,” he said, staring at the TV. Jimmy Stewart was sitting in the guard’s room, wrapped in a blanket. “Oh, wow! It’s a Wonderful Life.”
My sister sent you, Lauren thought. It explained everything. He was not a Moonie or a serial killer. He was this year’s version of the crystal pyramid mate selector. “How do you know my sister?”
“She channeled me,” he said, leaning back against the sofa. “The Maharishi Ram Das was instructing her in trance-meditation, and she accidentally channeled my spirit out of the astral plane.” He pointed at the screen. “I love this part where the angel is trying to convince Jimmy Stewart he’s dead.” pp. 143-144

After this he tells her that he is there is give what she really wants for Christmas, “her heart’s desire”, before going on to criticise her computer addressed cards, store wrapped presents, etc. Then he disappears, along with her cards, and leaves a Christmas tree growing out of her kitchen floor.
The rest of the story sees Lauren recruit Frank to help her deal with her spirit problem, and the two of them work together to try and get rid of him, as well as cope with various other changes Chris the spirit makes, such as Lauren’s off-the-shoulder black party dress—bought to impress Scott—being changed into a Yanomano Indian costume (Frank helpfully suggests she could wear last year’s pretty red number).
At this point (spoiler) I could see that Lauren was going to end up with Frank and not Scott, and so it materialises (dates with Scott are thwarted by Chris, Frank and Lauren have to come up with last minute gifts for everyone at the office when only Office Depot is open, Fred arrives at the party with the cheese puffs Lauren was meant to bring, Evie arrives wearing the black dress, etc., etc.). Finally, Chris arrives at the party dressed as Santa Claus.
This is an entertaining fantasy rom-com that gets off to a very good start, but I thought it tailed off towards the end (I’m not sure if this is because of pacing/padding problems, or because I guessed where it was going). I also thought that the two movies are referenced too much—but this is maybe a function of describing enough about them to those who aren’t familiar with them. Overall, though, not bad.
***+ (Good to Very Good, or, more accurately, Very Good to Good). 14,000 words.

Cyber-Claus by William Gibson

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Cyber-Claus by William Gibson (The Washington Post Book World, 1991) is set in the near future and begins with a house AI detecting activity on the roof on Xmas Eve. The defences are activated and the owner prepares to confront the intruders.
This very brief piece ends (spoiler) with house AI identifying eight quadrupeds and one biped on the roof—and then the latter starts to come down the chimney . . . .
A lightweight squib.

* (Mediocre). 550 words.

The Cold Solution by Don Sakers

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Cold Solution by Don Sakers (Analog, July 1991) is a direct response to an earlier story from the magazine’s history, The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin (Astounding, August 1954). If you have never heard of this latter story it involves a spaceship pilot discovering a stowaway on his ship during a trip to take vital medicines to a colony planet. If the (female) stowaway remains on board (extra mass) the pilot won’t make it as he doesn’t have enough fuel. So the choice is: (a) she goes out the airlock or (b) they both die in space, and the colonists die too. The story (spoiler) confounds reader expectation of the time by having the pilot put the stowaway out the airlock rather than finding an engineering solution.1
Reader reactions to the story often miss the Trolley Problem2 at its heart (which of these two awful choices do you choose?) and generally fall into one of two categories: (a) there are engineering or security or physical problems that can or should have been addressed, or (b) the piece is an intentional piece of misogyny because a woman is brutally killed (this latter ignores her sympathetic prior treatment in the story, the likely feelings of the readers—who were from a “woman and children first” generation—and the fact that if it was a man no-one would care. That said, the pilot could have shot her first, which would have been a quicker and less painful death.)3 As we shall see, the piece under consideration falls into the first category.
Saker’s story begins in a similar manner to Godwin’s original with a female spaceship pilot finding a young boy who has smuggled on board her ship. The next few pages are a clunky setup of the problem outlined above (along with in-jokes and references to the original—the boy had spoken to a “Technician Godwin,” and the pilot remembers an old story that she read at the Academy, etc.). Eventually, the ship gets closer and closer to the decision point (there are options that give her a little more fuel but not enough) and, just before they get there, she tells the boy she’d give anything to prevent his death—just before dialling up her laser knife to maximum.
The story (spoiler) then cuts to a hospital where both of them are having their limbs regenerated, and we find out that the pilot amputated various of their limbs with the laser knife, before putting them out the airlock to get down to the required mass (I think the amputations include her legs, and one of his arms and both of his legs, but I can’t remember).
This is a silly end to a story that either (a) misses the conundrum at the heart of the original story or (b) decides to dodge it. Or maybe thinks that there is no philosophical problem so large that it can’t be sorted with a big enough spanner.
Worth reading for the unintentionally hilarious ending.
* (Mediocre). 4,100 words.

1. For a longer review of Tom Godwin’s story see The Cold Equations at sfmagazines.com.

2. The Wikipedia page on The Trolley Problem, or the more entertaining The Good Life take on the matter.

3. For a story that responds to Godwin’s story as a misogynistic piece see my review of Think Like a Dinosaur by James Patrick Kelly at sfmagazines.com.