Currently Reading - The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection

12. “Tangents” by Greg Bear

Peter “I’m not Alan Turing, honest” Thornton takes under his wing a musically and mathematically talented Korean boy who learns to perceive in four dimensions.

You know, I did not start out writing these summaries of the stories, just my responses to them. But sometimes the sarcasm of summarising what happens is part of what I need to communicate with. Or at least I am too lazy in the moment to deviate from standard short story response form.

In this case I was apprehensive early in the story because it reminded me of the H. P. Lovecraft story “From Beyond”, which had been read to me once by blood-and-vitriol, especially since past experience has shown me Greg Bear does not shy away from the gruesome or disturbing (I nearly quit a couple of projects after reading “Blood Music” in the first of these collections). This story ended up being rather the reverse however, and the characters are saved from bullying, homophobia, and U.S. immigration by inspiration and an appreciation for music.

Contrast what I was just saying about “The Pure Product” with this which feels like what I might call more traditional science fiction. I liked this story perhaps largely for that familiarity, but would not recommend specifically unless it already sounds appealing.

Currently Reading - The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection

13. “The Beautiful and the Sublime” by Bruce Sterling

This was interesting. So far as the idea of science fiction as futurism goes, this story feels like it has hit the mark more closely than many others. A world in which socially networked computing has been a locus of generation gap, as privacy norms diverge and romantic extravagance and artistry gain pre-eminent social cachet over any sort of mercantile materialism or nationalism.

The death of ‘the tradition of Western analytical thought’, as the narrator put it, with some satisfaction, thanks to the outsourcing of such drudging tasks as flight, medicine and science to uninspired artificial intelligence, maybe economy and governance also and leave the world with a vast leisure class free to pursue its emotional callings.

I think being published as science fiction for a science fiction audience this story may well have been intended as a tale of disquiet. Transformative AI bringing a comfortable sort of utopia to Earth, but at what cost? I suppose I am disquieted, because this seems like just such a world in which I may be able to… at least make an attempt at performing science, even if I were still foredoomed to failure. But in this world such a pursuit is so deprecated as to seemingly require wealthy patronage in what feels like contradiction against the freedom of others to pursue art. So, disquiet that in an imagined world where existing barriers to my pursuit of a passion are eliminated there are instead new barriers which keep almost anyone out.

Ah, but who am I kidding? There is no world in which myself coincides with the pursuit of science. This however is a good story I reckon[*].

*Caveatly of course, like de-industrialisation of North America but no hint of any sort of decolonisation in this world.