This anthology is so good I bought it twice. Not really, but yes. I bought two copies by accident a month apart. I was still suffering from Shingles during all of this time (I’ve got symptoms now as I type) so I’m excusing myself, and I’m sure the Andromeda Spaceways people don’t mind selling two copies. They’re an excellent non-profit organisation so I don’t regret it from that point of view. I could put my spare copy in a street library, give them some high-quality speculative fiction writing.
The authors featured in this volume are:
- Jim Gourley
- Ephiny Gale
- Evan Kennedy
- Carolyn Rahaman
- Frank Hebben (translated by Richard Kunzmann)
- Rachel Chimits
- Jennifer R Donohue
- Tara Campbell
- A T Sayre
- Rose West
- Michael Gardner
- Ruth Gilbert
I’d like to only detail the first story, it’s so touching. Such a beautiful and heartrending story. Some families have landed on Cambria with a view to creating a colony. There is an allergen that people don’t have immunity to so everyone dies. One set of parents manage to deliver a baby before they die, they also create a robot with AI to look after the child while she waits for help. The robot is instructed as much as the wife is able, but she dies before she is able to give a full briefing. Human growth and interactions are rather complex. But Baba the robot cares for Amari, the baby, as well as possible, for most of 12 years. Then the rescue ship finally arrives. And while that’s a spoiler, it’s really only a little spoiler because we always expect a rescue ship to arrive. I should not have opened the book to remind myself of this story, I ended up reading most of the story again. Just as beautiful the second time around.
I always recommend Andromeda Spaceways, they have such good authors and their editing is also on point. I have so many sitting on my shelf, if I scribbled words about one a week I’d probably be here until next year.