Not of Woman Born, Edited by Constance Ash (1999, 272 pages) – A themed anthology of unusual births and even more unusual birthrights. A nice mix of some intriguing short stories, most of which I really liked.
Hunting Mother by Sage Walker – I’m always intrigued by what order an anthologist puts the stories in and how they decide. I would not have picked this as my “grabber” story simply because it doesn’t have a lot of story to it. It’s got enough atmosphere for two or three tales and the characters are riveting, but not much happens. On the first page, we discover the hero, appropriately named Cougar, is a hybrid human on a terrarium bound for another planet. His mother, a geneticist, created him from her eggs and the cells of a – you guessed it – cougar. She’s dying and wants him to help her end it. He, although designed to help rid the ship of excess life, is hesitant to kill her. That’s the entire story. After many pages of wonderful world building, we finally get to his decision. Pretty to look at, but not much substance.
Judith’s Flowers by Susan Palwick – And then we kick it up a notch! Another character with a unique background has to make a decision, but somehow I didn’t know which life she was going to choose. An impoverished Mexican girl from Baja comes to California to attend university. She’s got blonde hair and blue eyes and must decide if she wants to be a US citizen or a Mexican citizen by midnight. She misses her Latino grandmother, she doesn’t want to leave her boyfriend, she’s disgusted by the US media’s depiction of Mexico, and she knows if she leaves, her grandmother won’t get the monthly checks she sends. I couldn’t guess which way she was going to decide, but I’m happy with her decision.
A Gift to Be Simple by Patricia A. McPhillip – And another notch still. When a peaceful Shaker colony finds its members growing old and no new people entering the conclave, a member decides to take advantage of the encroaching technology and bear her own clone. After all, they have an affinity for the simple life. Who needs converts when you can replace yourself?
Island of the Ancestor by William F. Wu – This is a short adventure of another clone – a young man whose genes are those of his ancient ancestor. Groomed and trained to be the religious leader of his family’s Disneyland, he discovers can’t abide the blatant swindling his family does in his name as a faith healer. He chooses to escape and start his life over with the help of a beautiful industrial spy. There’s nothing wrong with a little adventure mixed in with a good concept.
One Day at Central Convenience Mall by Nina Kiriki Hoffman – I can easily see where the inspiration for this story came from. I’ve often thought all the salesgirls in a mall looked like the same young woman. In this story of android workers, they all are. One android – Book Store – notices her neighbor Dress Shop is acting strangely. She’s reading books and ordering strange coffee. When a human appears and tries to free Book Store by plugging in an unauthorized jack into Book Store’s skull, Dress Shop takes it instead, and Security Cop has to arrest both the human and Dress Shop. But Book Shop – who isn’t programmed to read anything remotely subversive – picks up Dress Shop’s book and slips it into her pocket. Clever story.
Dead in the Water by Jack McDevitt – I’ve never read a McDevitt short story, but I’ve read lots of his novels. This is another character faced with a life-altering decision. In the near future, specially engineered babies would be immortal, but there are strings attached: the couple can have no more children, the child will be sterile, people will hate them for their elitist. After she’s involved in an auto accident, she decides.
Raising Jenny by Janni Lee Simner – The grown, third daughter gets an odd endowment when her clinging mother passes away. She’s to carry her mother’s clone. Relying on nurture rather than nature, she tries everything to ensure her daughter is not her mother, encouraging to spread her wings and see the world like she never could. Unfortunately, this apple didn’t fall far enough from the tree.
There was an Old Woman by Robert Silverberg – Reported to be the first use of the word “clone,” this tale by one of the masters is clever and surprising. A rich geneticist is fired for attempting to prove nurture over nature by suggesting they experiment on babies. Taking her money and her fertilized egg to a ranch in the middle of nowhere, she splits the egg into thirty-two identical duplicates and raises the blond, blue-eyed batch of clones. From an early age, she determines their careers: a doctor, a lawyer, a historian, a criminal, and so on. Home schooled at an early age, they enter the best colleges and excel at their assigned areas of expertise. Only when they come home after graduation do they discover they hate their chosen occupations. The question is how to tell their domineering dear old mom.
Remailer by Debra Doyle and James D. McDonald – I am not a big fan of made-up pronouns and jive techno babble so this futuristic missing person’s case wasn’t my favorite just because it was so difficult to read.
The Leopard’s Garden by Constance Ash – A dark and atmospheric tale of the future where Africa is isolated and trying to rebuild its ecosystem. An aristocratic white man comes to the wild interior to find his ancestor’s bones but discovers the women of Africa do not intend to include men in their future. A story with some grit.
Of Bitches Born by Michael Armstrong – My favorite story. A non-conformist refuses to use cloned sled dogs to race and frequently comes out last. I wondered how the horse versus steam engine story was going to end, but when everything rides on one high stake race, I was totally absorbed.
Doppels by Richard Parks – An actor is replaced by an ageless android and, by contract, has to provide input for the android’s eventual replacement of him. As he faces his own obsolescence, he gets in touch with the pieces of his humanity – including his dying ex-wife – he left behind.
Daddy’s World – A child living in a virtual fairyland begins to question his perfect family and his strange world. Only when his sister suddenly outages him, does he discover he is simply a recording in a computer, put there by his heartbroken parents when he died of cancer. They attempt to keep the brain engaged while waiting for cloning science to catch up and return their son to them.
