Monday, June 12, 2017

Deal Me In: #22 & #23


I'm still working my way through Jay's Deal Me In Challenge . In a nutshell--we line up 52 short stories for the year, we match those stories up to a card in a regular deck of card, and each week we shuffle our deck (of real cards) and draw a card from whatever remains in the deck. I'm playing catch-up for the last two weeks. During the week of  May 31, I drew the Eight of Diamonds which gave me "Hot House Flowers" by Miker Resnick followed the next week (June 10) by the Seven of Diamonds and "Everywhere" by Geoff Ryman, both stories from
The Year's Best Science Fiction 17th Annual Collection by Gardner Dozois, ed.




Up first, Resnick's story "Hot House Flowers" gives readers a different look at what the immortal life might look like. What if science found a way to keep the human body alive for just about forever, but there was no guarantee what shape it would be in? What if men and women became little more than "hot house flowers" with every need but one--a meaningful life--tended to by human gardeners? And what if the weed of discontent invaded the garden?


image source




"Everywhere" by Geoff Ryman is another science fiction selection. This one portrays a purportedly utopian society and asks the question: Do those who live in utopia really recognize it as such? And do we, the readers, recognize the world described in here as a perfect society? I'm not sure I do....

 

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