Rip-Off!
Rip-Off! Scalzi, John, Jack Campbell, Mike Resnick, Tad Williams, et al., stories/scripts. Audio CD and download. "[P]roduced in partnership with SFWA — Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. Gardner Dozois served as project editor." Audible Frontiers, 2012.[1] Brilliance Audio, 2015. [2]
From Barnes & Noble Blurb (linked above):
In Rip-Off!, 13 of today’s best and most honored writers of speculative fiction face a challenge even they would be hard-pressed to conceive: Pick your favorite opening line from a classic piece of fiction (or even non-fiction) — then use it as the first sentence of an entirely original short story.
In the world of Rip-Off!, "Call me Ishmael" introduces a tough-as-nails private eye—who carries a harpoon; The Wonderful Wizard of Oz inspires the tale of an aging female astronaut who’s being treated by a doctor named Dorothy Gale; and Huckleberry Finn leads to a wild ride with a foul-mouthed riverboat captain who plies the waters of Hell.
Relevant here
[Robert] Charles Wilson's "Fireborn": Published in hard-copy, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirtieth Annual Collection, ed. Gardner Dozois.[3] See for device that allows aerial dancing in a giant avatar, for the intersection of dance, technology, and politics. For the device, cf. and strongly contrast the anti-gravity jumping belts in Buck Rogers (et al.) in the late 1920s.[4]
Lavie Tidhar's "The Red Menace": Published in hard-copy, Mash Up, ed. Gardner Dozois (Titan Books, 2016, 2017).[5] Transportation via portals, using technology of old aliens who once inhabited the planet called by Terran Bolsheviks, Mir (and perhaps much more). Cf. and contrast portals here that we can picture as silvery-cool, with those of "Muse of Fire" (see below).
John Scalzi's "Muse of Fire": Rpt. Mash Up, ed. Gardner Dozois (Titan Books, 2016, 2017). See for plasma studies and experiments, and Hestia — named for the goddess of hearth and home ... and fire. (SPOILER) The protagonist thinks he's freeing from Hell a human mathematician named Hestia; actually he's opening a fiery portal into Hell, allowing demons onto Earth, apparently commanded by Hestia.[6]
Mary Robinette Kowal's "The Lady Astronaut of Mars": Published in hard-copy, Mash Up, ed. Gardner Dozois (Titan Books, 2016, 2017), and elsewhere (cited at link).[7] T. S. Eliot's term "objective correlative was, appropriately here, appropriate by a number of literary critics who tweaked its meaning. This story is relevant for an objective correlative in this ripped-off sense of IBM cards[8] made by the protagonist of the story into art works like origami eagles of various sorts. The cards are both a literal embodiment of a program taking the "Lady Astronaut" back into space, and, as her art-work eagles: elegantly multivalent symbols and objective correlatives of her last — one-way — trip into space and of the home/nest the astronaut leaves, which houses her dying husband. Seeing and raising by a good deal the reference to T. S. Eliot — even as William Shakespeare wrote a couple or three "Problem Plays," most notably Measure for Measure, Mary Robinette Kowal has written here a Problem Story, properly including those problematic IBM cards and the cards as converted to works of folk art. (See above though for this story's starting off from, if perhaps not much inspired by, nothing by Shakespeare but L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.)
James Patrick Kelly's "Declaration": Published in hard-copy, Mash Up, ed. Gardner Dozois (Titan Books, 2016, 2017), and elsewhere (cited at link).[9] The "Declaration" referenced is the U.S. Declaration of Independence, primarily the memorable opening two paragraphs, with emphasis on "Life, Liberty[,] and the Pursuit of Happiness."[10] "Declaration" combines Jefferson et al. with The Wichawskis's THE MATRIX (1999),[11] looking at the desirability of life (largely or completely) in VR, independent of "hard time" in the "hard" world most of us consider real. See for cyberpunk and disability studies[12] and for age and generational tensions if not conflict. Note also surveillance by an "overlord" program some of us could think of as a Fitbit[13] with mild enforcement power, or Arthur C. Clarke's Overlords from Childhood's End with authoritarian/totalitarian leanings and too much time on their hands. For the images of "stashed" people spending all or most of their time in VR, cf. THE MATRIX franchise but also the "coffins" in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY as novel and film.
RDE, finishing, 4Jun22
