Currently Reading - The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection

10. “The Pure Product” by John Kessel

Kaleidoscopic wanderings of what is probably a visitor from some nihilistic future across North America. First person protagonist takes care to maintain distance from the audience “people like you” vs “people like me” - socially manipulative, disdainful of human well-being except as a medium for ‘art’.

Felt like this story invited a lot of questioning of its narrative. How real various experiences were, how honest the protagonist was being with the audience and with himself, the degree of truth in accusations levelled at him.

Also especially at this point in the collection being struck by how contemporary a turn science fiction seems to have taken. Feels like most of the stories in this collection were set in the then-present, give or take a decade or so, and in other cases if not the present then in something recognisably like the present with whatever tweaks are needful for the story to function.

I would not have anticipated this based on the stories I read in my childhood and teen years, most of which were far removed from the present in at least one of time or space or world-state and attempted to convey a feeling of such. Many of these stories feel like they could almost have a place in a non-genre anthology if the speculative elements were taken as narrative devices, this one especially.

I don’t think this is why I haven’t especially warmed to the stories in this year’s collection, since many had potential in my eyes and just took turns I did not care for.