Gary (USA: MA) (2008/07/29):
Donald A. Wollheim has done it again! With an uncanny knack for discovering promising new talents and picking award-winning fiction, he has proven himself one
of the most influential forces in modem science fiction. And now he's gathered 11 of the finest stories published in 1988 - including four major award nominees - for this 1989 ANNUAL WORLD'S BEST SF anthology.Here are Steven Gould's "Peaches for Mad Molly" (nominated for both Nebula and Hugo Awards) and "Schrodinger's Kitten" by George Alee Effinger (winner of the Nebula and a Hugo nominee). The first offers a startling perspective of the future, as the narrator of the story journeys through the diverse, often dangerous levels of his society; the second is a gripping exploration of quantum physics and the many possible alternate futures generated by a young girl's rendezvous with destiny in a deserted
alleyway. Among the other innovative visions of the future you'll find: "Adrift Among the Ghosts" by Jack L. Chalker, the poignant story of an alien criminal sentenced by his nonviolent race to be the sole inhabitant of a space probe collecting TV programs beamed from an Earth they can no longer contact - the electronic ghosts of a devastated world. Dirac Sea" by Geoffrey A. Landis (a Hugo nominee) is the story of a youthfill physicist who discovers time travel, and begins searching the past in hopes of
escaping his present-day dilemma. Tanith Lee's "A Madonna of the Machine" portrays a haunting tomorrow in which free will has been replaced by an eternally programmed existence serving the Machine - until one man, possessed by a recurring Vision of a beautiful woman, dares to question the purpose of this existence. "The Flies of Memory" by Ian Watson describes an encounter with alien "tourists" - giant Flies that memorize everything they see - whose plan to take home "souvenirs" prompts a human reaction that may lead to a tragic loss for both the Flies and the peoples of Earth. And Wollheim has included equally enthralling works by David Brin (the Hugo-nominated "The Giving Plague"), John Shirley, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, B.W. Clough and Frederik Pohl. From a virus that can create a more altruistic race of human beings to rebellion in a grim police state fueled by the next step in computer evolution, THE 1989 ANNUAL WORLD'S BEST SF is a landmark collection that opens the way to exciting new dimensions of the imagination on the cutting edge of SF. JACKET ART BY RICHARD POWERS
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