Monday 2 March 2015

Various Authors

This is an anthology of very different stories interpreting the theme of 'stranded'. Very enjoyable for any lover of science fiction or speculative fiction.




No Way Home

Amazon.com No Way Home

My review - 


This anthology of stories on the theme of being stranded shows how differently a group of authors can deal with a subject. From the title and the cover image I envisaged a clutch of tales about people left behind on alien planets but the authors interpreted the brief far more widely than that. There were inter-planetary stories of course, and a favourite of mine was XE, or People are Crazy. This was a really exciting adventure story with a great twist. I also particularly liked The Happy Place which took place on the planet Mars. Other stories involved time rather than place or didn’t treat the planet earth as ‘home’ – a good twist. Revolver took place in a very nasty future and again, had a climactic ending. There must be a name for a phobia about abandoned buildings or massive industrial machinery – I have it myself. It meant that the final story really gave me the creeps, and that’s quite apart from the story itself which is quite a twist on the theme.

Although any reader is bound to have favourites there wasn’t a duff story in this collection and I found the length of the stories particularly successful. It allowed the reader to engage with the plot and characters in greater depth than is usual in short stories. I hope there will be more of these collections of themed speculative fiction. As long as authors who write good quality fiction are chosen, as in this book, then they can’t fail. I received and Advance Reader Copy of this book in order to review it.

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