DONALD WOLLHEIM, Editor, with Arthur W. Saha – The 1989 Annual World’s Best SF. Daw #783, paperback original; 1st printing, June 1989. Cover art by Jim Burns.

#5. IAN WATSON – The Flies of Memory. Novella. First published in Asimov’s SF, September 1988. Expanded into the novel of the same title (Headline, UK, paperback, 1990).

   “The Flies of Memory” begins fine enough, a story told with many layers of meaning, or so it seems. The primary protagonist is Charles Spark, an expert in body language, a skill that places him in high demand by government agencies. And what better time to be called into service than when a mammoth ship from space lands in the Mediterranean, not far off shore from Alexandria.

   The ship is filled with large alien fly-like creatures (therefore immediately dubbed Flies) whose purpose on Earth is not known, but they act like tourists, visiting locales all around the world — the city of Rome most particularly — and committing what they see to memory. Why? No one knows.

   And by the end of the story I don’t think I still really know. It’s a long story, 55 pages in the paperback edition, and there is a quantum jump between the last 18 pages and what has come before, right about the time Spark and the nun who has been acting as the Flies’ guide are invited to enter the aliens’ spaceship.

   What had been an interesting collection of ideas and plot lines involving alien psychology, the mafia, the KGB and the inner workings of the Vatican turns in an instant into another story altogether, one with an ending that tosses away most of what came before, and produces instead … well, all I can say is that I was expecting more — a whole lot more. I’m sorry to say that I missed the boat altogether. You may do better with this one than I did.

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Previously from the Wollheim anthology: GEORGE ALEC EFFINGER “Schrödinger’s Kitten.”