Redshift Part 1

REDSHIFT.

edited by al sarrantonio.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

I've said this before: No book is an island; and this particular one owes much to a few special people. My thanks to:Beth, always there, who put up with another one; Julie Kristian, who hunted (and found!) gold; Laura Anne Gilman, editor supreme; Kathleen Bellamy, who gently persevered; Dan Simmons, for reasons within; Joe Lansdale, who wrote one tood.a.m.nlong-and for duty above and beyond; Larry Niven, for making me think; Ralph Vicinanza, who, again, piloted the agent's ship; And editors, the quiet heroes of the field who, almost always unheralded, got or get it done: Terry Carr, David G. Hartwell, Ellen Datlow, Damon Knight, Bob Silverberg, Gardner Dozois, Gordon Van Gelder, Pat LoBrutto, Susan Allison, Ginger Buchanan, Sharon Jarvis, Melissa Singer, Amy Stout, Harriet McDougal, Jennifer Brehl, John Douglas, Scott Edelman, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Stan Schmidt, Jeanne Cavelos ...

Too many to name.

INTRODUCTION.

Redshift: Doppler effect evidenced by a move toward the red end of the spectrum, indicating motion away from Earth-as in an expanding universe.

An expanding universe: that's what this book is about. To put it as simply as possible, what you now hold in your hands (we hope and pray) is the finest original sf anthology of the last twenty-five years-and the future of speculative fiction.

PART ONE: WHAT.

In 1998, while a.s.sembling my last anthology, 999: New Stories of Horror and Suspense, I set myself a new goal: to put together, at the turn of the millennium (the real new millennium which began in 2001) a huge original anthology of speculative fiction stories. My initial inspiration was Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions, the publication of which in 1967 changed the science fiction field forever. Much of what Ellison codified in that book-the pushing of envelopes, the annihilation of taboos, the use of experimental prose-had been in the air for some time (after all, this was the sixties), but he was the first to nail it between two hardcovers* with a force and will that made it irrefutable. Science fiction (Ellison used the term "speculative fiction" to describe this blossoming mutation that, by its very nature of openness, contained elements of fantasy, horror, and brush strokes of just about every other genre, as well as the techniques of conventional and experimental so-called "literary"

*"Mike Moorc.o.c.k, of course, put the phenomenon between two soft magazine covers in the mid-sixties with New Worlds magazine in the U.K., which gave sustenance to the New Wave movement that fomented this whole revolution. fiction) had been evolving; after the publication of Dangerous Visions, the new monster stood on its hind legs roaring, fully born."

The monster continued to roar; in 1973 there came a second volume from Ellison, Again, Dangerous Visions, and throughout the next decade and beyond, numerous other anthologies-as well as whole series of anthologies, such as...o...b..t edited by Damon Knight(the first numbers of which actually predated Dangerous Visions), New Dimensions edited by Robert Silverberg, and Universe edited by Terry Carr-continued to nurture this melding of the hard and soft sciences in fiction, as well as its literary maturity of style. There were many others. Even into the eighties and nineties, venturesome editors, such as Ellen Datlow, with her fantasy-inspired, s.e.xually liberating anthologies, and Patrick Nielsen Hayden, with his Starlight series (three volumes, as I write this) continued to elevate the field.

The magazines, too, absorbed the new gestalt, and, over the years, have continued to evolve.*

*"For much better, deeper, and finer discussions of these developments, there are far better sources than me. Start with Clute and Nicholls's Science Fiction Encyclopedia, either in print or on CD-ROM as Grolier Science Fiction: The Multimedia Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, which includes video and audio clips."

Given this history, was there really a need for another "cutting edge" original sf anthology, here in 2001? What would be the reasons for putting together such a book?

I had one d.a.m.ned good reason for jumping into such a project. Two, actually.

But one's a secret-for now.

PART TWO: WHY.

The "Ellison Revolution," it seems to me, had four goals: the breaking of taboos, the presentation of new ways of telling stories, the expansion of the sf field, and-well, I'll keep the fourth one in my back pocket for now, since it happens to dovetail with one of my own reasons for doing this book.

As for taboos, someone asked me: What taboos are left to break in an era when the media discuss the president performing s.e.x acts in the oval office? There do seem to be, even in science fiction, precious few taboos to break these days.+ +"I do think there are a few pieces in this book that would have had a hard time finding a home, specifically due to content, even in this day and age. Even though there have been numerous original anthologies devoted to all kinds of former "taboo" subjects, the magazines, in particular, which still publish the lion's share of sf short fiction, are still averse to certain types of stories. Then again, as I've been told, taboos do change with the times, don't they?

What's political incorrectness if not a new taboo? "And as for new ways of telling stories, there's also really little left to discuss. By now, just about every style from Ulysses to Ulysses S. Grant has been tried in sf-with mixed results. To my mind, there are plenty of ways to tell a story. If what you have in the end are pretty words that make no discernible pattern or narrative, well, that ain't a story, even if you call it "experimental." The truth is, whatever works works-as long as it works.

Those two goals were pretty much reached-and, as you already realize, a long time ago.

What about the third goal of the ER (Ellison Revolution): the expansion of the sf field?

Ah, finally, something to work with in the year of 2001.

The question must be asked: Now that it's pretty much absorbed the soft sciences, the literary avant-garde, and the humanities, is the sf field so staid, so settled, that there's nowhere left for it to be pushed to?

Of course not.

Never.

The sf field is by its very nature the luckiest of literary forms-its basic subject matter, the sciences, whether soft or hard, are always themselves evolving. Even though the ER brought in all kinds of new subject matter, there is a built-in factor in sf that ensures that it will never get old. The sciences-soft or hard-are continually providing the field with new ideas.*

*"And vice versa-as someone once said: "First come the dreamers." Need I mention any name beyond that of Jules Verne?"

Science fiction has built-in forward momentum.

My first reason for putting this book together-the continued revolutionary expansion of sf-is not only valid, but also vital. Hopefully this project will present a blueprint for the future.

What about my second reason-the secret one?

Well... I think I'll keep it a secret for just a bit longer.

First we need to find out the most important thing: how the writers reacted when Iapproached them with this nutty idea of mine.

PART THREE: HOW.

Thus girded and armed with my idea for a huge new book of speculative fiction stories that would expand the field and possibly change its future, I stumbled forth into the world to present it to the only people who mattered: the best sf writers in the world.

How did they respond?

Quite frankly, they knocked my socks off.

To anyone who asked (few needed to), I said: "If you could influence the course of sf for the next twenty-five years, show me that story!"

I ended up with, I think, not only a blueprint for the future, but also a primer of the changes that have taken place since the sixties-a summation of how sf has expanded in the last twenty-five years.

And not to dwell on this, but the number of submissions I received from women-especially new writers-was remarkable. This is not something we would have seen a few decades ago, for the simple reason that there weren't many women writing this stuff.

PART FOUR: (AGAIN) WHAT.

Okay, enough already-what was my second reason for doing this book?

Well, that really isn't much of a secret. It's what every original anthologist wants to do: present a big book of really good stories.

No problem there. At over 200,000 words, containing three novellas, five novelettes, and twenty-two short stories, Redshift is easily one of the fattest original sf anthologies in some time. I also happen to think it's one of the best. If the stories in this book are any indication, sf will be very healthy for the foreseeable future. The diversity and quality of the pieces I received were remarkable. The good stories that I had to turn down would nearly fill another volume. There's something in this book for everyone-if you can't find something you like, you must be brain-dead!

PART FIVE: WHERE.

So is Redshift the finest original sf anthology of the last twenty-five years? Will it expand sf and influence its future for the next twenty-five years?

That's for you to decide. But it is, I think, one h.e.l.l of a good book of new stories.

A final question: Where are we, here at the dawn of the third millennium, in this totemic year of 2001?

Where we always are, and want to be: on a cliff overlooking a wonderful new expanding universe of words.

Time for me to push you in.

Al Sarrantonio January 2001 Yikes! Here's a story leading off this so-called cutting edge anthology that could have been published (minus the naughty language) anywhere in the science fiction field in the last forty years. And by that I mean just about any magazine or anthology- or a number of same outside the field. I could see this one in the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post in 1968, for crissakes.

What gives?

I'll tell you what gives: this story is great fiction today, forty years ago, or forty years in the future. Great fiction transcends any definition of cutting edge or New Wave.

Or genre labels.

Or any other kind of baloney.

Dan Simmons is well known to you all, or should be. He is the author of Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, The Song of Kali, and many other sf and horror novels. He's won numerous awards, including the Bram Stoker Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the Hugo Award, and also has conquered the spy thriller and suspense fields.

He's also responsible for the inclusion of one of the other great stories in this book, as you shall see.

But that's later; for now: enjoy the h.e.l.l out of the following.

On K2 with Kanakaredes.

Dan Simmons.

The South Col of Everest, 26,200 feet.

If we hadn't decided to acclimate ourselves for the K2 attempt by secretly climbing to the eight-thousand-meter mark on Everest, a stupid mountain that no self-respecting climber would go near anymore, they wouldn't have caught us and we wouldn't have been forced to make the real climb with an alien and the rest of it might not have happened. But we did and we were and it did.

What else is new? It's as old as Chaos theory. The best-laid plans of mice and men and so forth and so on. As if you have to tell that to a climber.Instead of heading directly for our Concordia Base Camp at the foot of K2, the three of us had used Gary's nifty little stealth CMG to fly northeast into the Himalayas, straight to the bergeschrund of the Khumbu Glacier at 23,000 feet. Well, fly almost straight to the glacier; we had to zig and zag to stay under HK Syndicate radar and to avoid seeing or being seen by that stinking prefab pile of j.a.panese s.h.i.t called the Everest Base Camp Hotel (rooms US $4,500 a night, not counting Himalayan access fee and CMG limo fare).

We landed without being detected (or so we thought), made sure the vehicle was safely tucked away from the icefalls, seracs, and avalanche paths, left the CMG set in conceal mode, and started our Alpine-style conditioning climb to the South Col. The weather was brilliant.

The conditions were perfect. We climbed brilliantly. It was the stupidest thing the three of us had ever done.

By late on the third afternoon we had reached the South Col, that narrow, miserable, windswept notch of ice and boulders wedged high between the shoulders of Lhotse and Everest. We activated our little smart tents, merged them, anch.o.r.ed them hard to ice-spumed rock, and keyed them white to keep them safe from prying eyes.

Even on a beautiful late-summer Himalayan evening such as the one we enjoyed that day, weather on the South Col sucks. Wind velocities average higher than those encountered near the summit of Everest. Any high-climber knows that when you see a stretch of relatively flat rock free of snow, it means hurricane winds. These arrived on schedule just about at sunset of that third day. We hunkered down in the communal tent and made soup. Our plan was to spend two nights on the South Col and acclimate ourselves to the lower edge of the Death Zone before heading down and flying on to Concordia for our legal K2 climb. We had no intention of climbing higher than the South Col on Everest. Who would?

At least the view was less tawdry since the Syndicate cleaned up Everest and the South Col, flying off more than a century's worth of expedition detritus-ancient fixed ropes, countless tent tatters, tons of frozen human excrement, about a million abandoned oxygen bottles, and a few hundred frozen corpses. Everest in the twentieth century had been the equivalent of the old Oregon Trail-everything that could be abandoned had been, including climbers' dead friends.

Actually, the view that evening was rather good. The Col drops off to the east for about four thousand feet into what used to be Tibet and falls even more sharply-about seven thousand feet-to the Western Cwm. That evening, the high ridges of Lhotse and the entire visible west side of Everest caught the rich, golden sunset for long minutes after the Col moved into shadow and then the temperature at our campsite dropped about a hundred degrees. There was not, as we outdoors people like to say, a cloud in the sky. The high peaks glowed in all their eight-thousand-meter glory, snowfields burning orange in the light. Gary and Paul lay in the open door of the tent, still wearing their therm-skin uppers, and watched the stars emerge and shake to the hurricane wind as I fiddled and fussed with the stove to make soup. Life was good.

Suddenly an incredibly amplified voice bellowed, "You there in the tent!"

I almost p.i.s.sed my thermskins. I did spill the soup, slopping it all over Paul's sleeping bag.

"f.u.c.k," I said.

"G.o.d d.a.m.n it," said Gary, watching the black CMG-its UN markings glowing and powerful searchlights stabbing-settle gently onto small boulders not twenty feet from the tent.

"Busted," said Paul.Hillary Room, Top of the World, 29,035 feet Two years in an HK floating prison wouldn't have been as degrading as being made to enter that revolving restaurant on the top of Everest. All three of us protested, Gary the loudest since he was the oldest and richest, but the four UN security guys in the CMG just cradled their standard-issue Uzis and said nothing until the vehicle had docked in the restaurant airlock-garage and the pressure had been equalized. We stepped out reluctantly and followed other security guards deeper into the closed and darkened restaurant even more reluctantly. Our ears were going crazy. One minute we'd been camping at 26,000 feet, and a few minutes later the pressure was the standard airline equivalent of 5,000 feet. It was painful, despite the UN CMC's attempt to match pressures while it circled the dark hulk of Everest for ten minutes.

By the time we were led into the Hillary Room to the only lighted table in the place, we were angry and in pain.

"Sit down," said Secretary of State Betty Willard Bright Moon.

We sat. There was no mistaking the tall, sharp-featured Blackfoot woman in the gray suit.

Every pundit agreed that she was the single toughest and most interesting personality in the Cohen Administration, and the four U.S. Marines in combat garb standing in the shadows behind her only added to her already imposing sense of authority. The three of us sat, Gary closest to the dark window wall across from Secretary Bright Moon, Paul next to him, and me farthest away from the action. It was our usual climbing pattern.

On the expensive teak table in front of Secretary Bright Moon were three blue dossiers. I couldn't read the tabs on them, but I had little doubt about their contents: Dossier #1, Gary Sheridan, forty-nine, semi-retired, former CEO of SherPath International, multiple addresses around the world, made his first millions at age seventeen during the long lost and rarely lamented dot-corn gold rush of yore, divorced (four times), a man of many pa.s.sions, the greatest of which was mountain climbing; Dossier #2, Paul Ando Hiraga, twenty-eight, ski b.u.m, professional guide, one of the world's best rock-and-ice climbers, unmarried; Dossier #3, Jake Richard Pettigrew, thirty-six, (address: Boulder, Colorado), married, three children, high-school math teacher, a good-to-average climber with only two eight-thousand-meter peaks bagged, both thanks to Gary and Paul, who invited him to join them on international climbs for the six previous years. Mr. Pettigrew still cannot believe his good luck at having a friend and patron bankroll his climbs, especially when both Gary and Paul were far better climbers with much more experience. But perhaps the dossiers told of how Jake, Paul, and Gary had become close friends as well as climbing partners over the past few years, friends who trusted each other to the point of trespa.s.sing on the Himalayan Preserve just to get acclimated for the climb of their lives.