The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection edited by Gardner Dozois

[james_davis_nicoll]

The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection (The Year’s Best Science Fiction, book 3) edited by Gardner Dozois

Comments

[theresawright]

An idealistic space scout discovers too late the dreadful reason for the disappearance of two of her colleagues.

Like ​“The Cold Equations,” this story falls apart if one introduces even rudimentary safety procedures.

More of an over-eager teen playing at being a space scout, which explains the carelessness on her part. But the complete lack of flight-safety protocols that let her sneak away with the family spaceship is very Cold Equations. Same with the design of the survey emergency beacon, which is basically a giant thermos that you need to open to read the message. Even Star Trek: TOS had automated beacons.

Some of the other stories are vaguely familiar. I know it's been a long time since I read this, but you'd think a collection of the Best would include more than one memorable story.

[ba_munronoe]

"I know it's been a long time since I read this, but you'd think a collection of the Best would include more than one memorable story."

Same here: I remember that cover, not so much the contents.

[(Anonymous)]

I found "Dogfight" memorable. Not for good reasons.

(Am I the only one who really wishes cyberpunk hadn't happened?)

[dewline]

Yeah, safety protocols don't survive libertarian/Darwinian authorial thinking very well, do they? Or they didn't back then.

[beamjockey]

Apropos of this, I just came across a review by Nick Allen of the new film Class Action Park. I am unlikely to watch this film anytime soon, but it seems germane. Allen writes:

“Class Action Park” is a sharp, funny, and bizarrely responsible documentary about an amusement park in Vernon, New Jersey that inexplicably hurt a lot of people. That recklessness was part of the fun—you could risk whiplash in a tube on the choppy waters of the Colorado River Ride, wade in a large wave pool that has a “death zone,” or commandeer the go-karts from Motor World and reach speeds of 50 miles per hour. The employees seemed more likely to join reckless behavior than stop it, and the rich guy behind it all was fulfilling his dream of creating a small world with no rules.