The Year's Best Science Fiction 10

I think it is of particular significance that “It Could Be You” was written by an Australian newsman, and that it first appeared in the United States in the pages of Short Story International.

I had somehow thought (or hoped?) that the terrifying—and terrifyingly recognizable—trends projected here were an exclusively American version of the world’s agony. I don’t know if I find more reassurance or despair in the author’s account of the sources of his story:

“(1) An Australian television show in which people’s misfortunes were paraded before audiences of grim, grey old ladies. ... (2) The fact that eleven million Australians support no less than twenty-five Government-run lotteries a week, tickets costing from a half dollar to about seven dollars each, with prizes from $12,000 to $200,000. ... (3) People whose disregard for a death or two a day has long been conditioned by the road accident toll, which was around 2,000 dead and 60,000 injured in the early 1960’s.”

Well, then, our sins are not exclusively our own; but neither is our sense of sin—nor our awareness of danger. And increasingly, there is evidence that neither “they” nor “we” any longer expect to resolve our problems inside the cultural or political isolation of those national sovereignties which have become ruinously overspecialized in today’s world—not because the outlook or behavior of national governments is narrower or more provincial than it used to be (quite the (opposite) but because technology and communications have so altered global realities that the very concept of “national sovereignty” is now too narrow, localized, overspecialized.

I think there is a growing awareness of the true decadence of, not just political, but social, cultural, and (rather more obviously) literary, artistic, and scientific customs and usages as well. If our awareness of decadence itself is subjective (and perhaps intuitive), it is reassuring to find indications that we reach just as instinctively for what is viable and (in the purest sense of the word) virtuous.

Among the most congenial of these portents has been the appearance of a magazine like Short Story International. I find myself equally pleased that the publishers of this new venture have put it in the hands of an editor of fine literary discernment and that they have put on the cover, by way of a symbol, a picture of Telstar.