Sunday, January 29, 2012

Karl Bunker Channels Heinlein


Some stories provoke more comments from me than others. That's no reflection on their quality. It depends on what catches my interest and what I'm feeling opinionated about when I read them. That said, I'll continue my review of the stories in The Year's Best Science Fiction Twenty-Seventh Annual Edition edited by Gardner Dozois.
It’s not surprising that  Karl Bunker’s “Under the Shouting Sky” reads like a Heinlein story. After all, it won the Robert Heinlein Centennial contest. The story features a little guy dismissed as having no higher purpose and imagination but who proves to have more of each than the visionary leader he accompanies. The little guy performs a vital sacrifice on a mission to find proof of an intelligent alien spacefaring culture.

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