Part III: The Year's Best Science Fiction 17 (1999) Plus Hypatia of Alexandria

The Year’s Best Science Fiction 17 (Stories from 1999) Edited by Gardner Dozois. Reviewing pages 215-382


Frederik Pohl's "Hatching the Phoenix" originally appeared in the Fall 1999/Winter 2000 issue of Amazing Stories. It ties in with his series of novels in which humans have found the technology of an alien race called the Heechee. The technology (which apparently allows faster than light travel) enables humans to explore the galaxy. This story's main character, Gelle-Klara Moynlin, is a wealthy woman of humble origins. She's founded a project to study a planet destroyed when its star went super nova thousands of years ago. The Heechee had left behind a video showing a wolf-like species which had advanced as far as primitive humans. Klara and the scientists in the project want to see if that species, which they call "Crabbers" developed a civilization before their sun exploded.

When we look at the stars, we're looking at the past. Not counting planets which look like stars in the night sky, the closest star to us is Alpha Centauri. It's 4 light years away. Which means we're seeing Alpha Centauri as it appeared 4 years ago. It's taken that long for its light to travel from Alpha Centauri to us. When we're looking at a star a thousand light years away, we're seeing how it looked a thousand years ago. The nova relevant to this story was detected by Chinese astronomers in 1054 AD. The team Klara funds, must travel thousands of light years from Earth ahead of the nova's light and set up a system which allows them to see the planet and increase the resolution of the images until they can see cities and airships and even individuals. Ultimately what they find is all too familiar to students of human history.

Of course, studying this planet seems like a MacGuffin as the story's main focus is a character study of Klara and her dealings with the scientists and her boyfriend. She sees herself as a mother figure. She wants a child. She owns an island which she uses as a home for orphans. She sponsors various people as goodwill ambassadors to the Heechee. These ambassadors are often promising people who need a new start on life. Her disenchantment with the Crabbers begins when she sees a Heechee video of primitive Crabbers hunting animals, in particular a mother and her off-spring.

Another interesting aspect of this story is that artificial intelligences run the space ships. An AI modeled on the ancient philosopher and mathematician Hypatia runs Klara's ship. Klara's Hypatia hates men and rarely misses an opportunity to blame Christians for everything bad that ever happened in history. While the real Hypatia had a reputation for chastity and turning aside suitors, there's no evidence that she hated men. It just seems that it was sex which she chose to live with out. She was friends with men and had male students. One of her students, Damascius said she was married to the philosopher Isidore although they apparently didn't have sex.

Also, the real Hypatia was friends with a number of Christians. However, her murder by a mob of Christians has ever since made her a martyr and served as an example of Christian intolerance. It's understandable that an AI modeled after Hypatia might develop an anti-Christian attitude due to her namesake's fate. Meanwhile, people who hate Christians have long used her as a tool for bashing Christians. It's like when racists point to a crime committed by a black man and, ignoring crimes committed by whites, use it as an excuse for their racism.

In reality though the intolerance which caused Hypatia's death is a human problem. It's not limited to Christians. It can be found among Jews, Muslims, Pagans, Buddhists, and yes, even Atheists.

I'm aware of two contemporary accounts of Hypatia's murder. One comes from Damascius, a Pagan and a student of hers. (What? Pagans don't have biases too?) Another comes from Socrates Scholasticus, a Christian albeit one who is highly critical of Cyril the Patriarch of Alexandria's Christians at the time of Hypatia's death. Socrates also advocated the study and preservation of Pagan writings believing they contained valuable wisdom.

According to Damascius, Cyril was jealous because lots of people visited Hypatia. That's the reason for her murder. People visited her.

Socrates praises Hypatia and scorns her slayers. He does mention a different motivation though. There were false accusations that Hypatia used her influence over the Prefect Orestes to fuel turmoil in which Christians were tortured and murdered. While making no excuses for the mob, Socrates places Hypatia's killing in the context of mob violence animating Alexandria, violence not limited to Christians.

There was a dispute over spectacles (dances) which drew large and unruly crowds. The Prefect Orestes decided to issue regulations concerning the dances. A crowd gathered to hear the regulations. Some Jewish members of the crowd turned on Hierax, a Christian scholar, and accused him of stirring up trouble. Orestes felt the Patriarch Cyril was encroaching on secular authority and that Cyril had monks spying on him. So he had Hierax publicly tortured. Cyril met with Jewish leaders and, issuing threats, demanded an end to harassment of Christians.

In response to the threats, a Jewish group then organized and carried out a massacre of Christians. Members of the group stationed themselves on streets throughout the city. They raised an alarm that a Christian church was on fire. When Christians came to fight the fire, the group slaughtered them. The next day, a mob of Christians retaliated, venting their fury on guilty and innocent alike, attacking synagogues and driving the Jewish population out of Alexandria.

Orestes rightfully declared that the persecution of the Jewish population was unjust. He protested to the Emperor. Cyril sent an account of the massacre carried out against Christians. The dispute between Orestes and Cyril continued.

Monks accosted Orestes who declared that he too was a Christian. A monk threw a rock which hit Orestes in the head. After a mob of Alexandrians scattered the monks, Orestes had the rock throwing monk tortured to death.

When someone accused Hypatia of using her influence with Orestes to promote continued conflict, a mob attacked her too. Her death was horrific. The mob stripped the flesh off her bones with either oyster shells, roof tiles, or post herds depending on the translations of Socrates and Damascius's accounts. Then the mob burned pieces of her body. Absolutely horrible.

Socrates' account of the violence is in Book VII of his Ecclesiastical History, Chapters XIII-XVI. You can find it here: http://www.searchgodsword.org/his/ad/ecf/pos/socratesscholasticus/view.cgi?file=npnf2-02-12.htm&number=2

Still, just as all Jews in Alexandria didn't participate in the massacre of Christians, neither did all Alexandrian Christians participate in or condone the violence against Hypatia and others. Yet there are some who use Hypatia's murder not just to condemn all Alexandrian Christians, they use it to attack all Christians everywhere, to promote intolerance toward Christians. This is what the AI Hypatia does. Actually, Hypatia's death was part of a cycle of mob violence that transcended faith. Jews, Christians, and Pagans were all victims of the violence. Nor were Christians the sole perpetrators of violence. The problem was that regardless of faith, certain people couldn't tolerate someone else believing differently.

Moving on . . .

M. John Harrison's "Suicide Coast" comes from the July 1999 Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I've read one or two of Harrison's Viriconium fantasy stories. I know he has devoted fans for his fantasy, but I enjoyed this science fiction story more. Sure there was a little bit of disorientation and confusion following a story where virtual reality, computer games, and the net have replaced so many physical experiences.

"Hunting Mother" by Sage Walker appeared in Not of Woman Born edited by Constance Ash. It's set on a generational ship where a scientist oversees animal/human hybrids she hopes will adapt to life on the planet where the ship is headed. To preserve resources and prevent overpopulation on the ship, her son, the hybrid Cougar, periodically culls the other hybrids. When she grows old and ill, the scientist asks her son to do something which disturbs him. She wants him to stalk and kill her. She gives various excuses about why she won't just commit suicide. When Cougar bases protests on human standards and beliefs, she raises questions about Cougar's humanity. Is this just a test of Cougar's humanity? Is it cruel to force this choice on him? Even if she chooses to end her life early, does Cougar have the right to carry it out?

"Mount Olympus" by Ben Bova comes from the February 1999 Analog. Two members of The Second Martian Expedition, Tomas Rodriguez and Mitsuo Fuchida, fly to the top of Olympus Mons, the tallest known mountain in the solar system. Rodriguez is the pilot. While Fuchida, a biologist has flying experience too, it hardly matches Rodriquez's experience as a fighter pilot. Rodriguez is currently an astronaut on loan from NASA. Rodriguez is the junior member of the expedition, and he has to take orders from a Russian cosmonaut. Fuchida is related to the only member of The First Expedition to die on Mars. Fuchida's father believes that the circumstances of the death dishonored the family and that it's up to Fuchida to atone for it. Fuchida is also secretly married, violating both the rules of the expedition and his father's wishes.

Conditions atop Olympus Mons are difficult. During the day in the shade, patches of carbon dioxide freeze into dry ice. At night, the temperatures drop more than 150 degrees below zero. Olympus Mons is a dead volcano, and the expedition's plans call for Fuchida to descend into it to explore and gather samples. Fuchida does, but when something goes wrong, both men must push against their physical limits, face their fears, and overcome their own psychological weaknesses to survive.

One minor mistake stuck with me. Part way into the story, the character named Trudy Hall suddenly becomes Tracey Hall.

Anyone who's read this far into the anthology has already read a number of well-written, well-told, hard science fiction stories. Here's another. It's hard science fiction combined with survival/adventure. It presents well-developed and likable characters whom you want to succeed.

At first, I struggled following Greg Egan's "The Border Guards" which comes from the October 1999 Interzone. It's starts with the protagonist participating in an energy game, a kind of quantum soccer or something like that. The protagonist grows fascinated by a brilliant but stand-offish new player named Margit. Eventually, the protagonist gets her to open up while the reader learns that the story takes place in a future in which people are virtually immortal and many live in "The New Territories" a place set up to deal with over population on Earth. Margit is from humanity's oldest living generation, the generation which remembers death, and she sees herself as a guard against horrible knowledge which she hopes later generations will never learn.

Michael Swanwick's "Scherzo with Tyrannosaur" appeared in the July 1999 Asimov's. Time travel is possible. Time Safety Officers make sure the past doesn't get changed. The narrator, a paleontologist "before I got promoted," runs an expedition which studies dinosaurs. His responsibilities include $100,000 a seat fundraisers. He appears ruthless and cynical in his efforts to prevent time paradoxes. But is that attitude just a facade which allows him to deal with people when he already knows their fates? In this story, he faces a moral question and a choice which even he finds troublesome as various ties and relationships emerge.

Robert Silverberg's "Hero of the Empire" is an alternate history story from the October/November 1999 Magazine of Fantasy and Science-Fiction. It occurs in a world where the Western Roman Empire didn't fall, and Christianity doesn't seem to exist. Its narration reads like excerpts from a series of letters although nothing distinguishes where one letter ends and another begins. The narrator is an exile from the Western Empire's Imperial court. As punishment, he's sent to Arabia Deserta to a city called Mecca.

The narrator believes he must perform some great service to the Empire to earn a recall from exile. At first he thinks he must find some way to check the Eastern Empire's growing influence in Arabia Deserta with its important trade routes. Then he meets a merchant on the verge of revealing himself as a prophet. Arabia Deserta is a pagan land, but the birth of Islam and a wave of conquest which would swamp much of the Eastern Empire and parts of the Western Empire looms . . . . Or does it?

Paul J. McAuley's "How we Lost the Moon, a True Story by Frank W. Allen" appeared in the anthology Moon Shots. It's a first hand account of the Moon's final days as it faces destruction due to a black hole caused by an experiment gone wrong.

Well, that's it for this weekend. Only 243 more pages to go.