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

[aesmael]

17. “Chance” by Connie Willis

Urgent, disjointed tale in which maybe two periods of the narrator’s life overlap.

This is another story which felt like it could have been placed in a non-genre collection. Actually, this story is so wide open to interpretation I feel almost as if I may as well not have read it - too much freedom to decide ‘what happened’, what it means. Although contrariwise, I would not have imagined that segment of possibilities without having read “Chance”.

Connie Willis has a huge reputation and I’m still looking forward to reading more, but so far of the three I’ve read by her the only one I really liked was “Blued Moon” in the second of these anthologies. “Chance” reminded me a little of “Blued Moon” for its university / college setting and focus on the role chance plays in romance and life paths, but the latter was one of my favourites in the collection where it appeared, being a very welcome light-hearted diversion in a volume of largely dreary apocalyptic tales. “Chance” by contrast feels much of a muchness with the rest of the collection so far.