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

 

17. “Chance” by Connie Willis

Urgent, disjointed tale in which maybe two periods of the narrator’s life overlap.

This is another story which felt like it could have been placed in a non-genre collection. Actually, this story is so wide open to interpretation I feel almost as if I may as well not have read it - too much freedom to decide ‘what happened’, what it means. Although contrariwise, I would not have imagined that segment of possibilities without having read “Chance”.

Connie Willis has a huge reputation and I’m still looking forward to reading more, but so far of the three I’ve read by her the only one I really liked was “Blued Moon” in the second of these anthologies. “Chance” reminded me a little of “Blued Moon” for its university / college setting and focus on the role chance plays in romance and life paths, but the latter was one of my favourites in the collection where it appeared, being a very welcome light-hearted diversion in a volume of largely dreary apocalyptic tales. “Chance” by contrast feels much of a muchness with the rest of the collection so far.