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zoes_human's review against another edition
2.0
I need to stop picking up anything with that man's name on it. I don't know why I bother.
Anyway ... where to begin ...
I'll begin with the two good bits-Untrained Luck by Elise Stephens and Thanatos Drive by Andrew Dykstal. Elise's story impressed me with her ability to create such fully fleshed-out universe in a short story. She offered impressive depth for so little prose. I'd love to see more of the world she created. Andrew's post-apocalyptic short, likewise, created a tremendous and thought-provoking vision with few words.
The rest was mediocre at best. This anthology is full of stories that are readable but fall completely out of the mind almost as soon as finished. The exception being the ones that are simply just bad. I certainly could have lived without L. Ron's The Idealist. "Little known" classics are often "little known" for good reason. This particular gem was a prime example of stories that gave scifi a bad name during the Golden Era. I DNFed it. I also DNFed Dark Equations of the Heart by David Cleden and damn near every essay in the book. I don't generally DNF short fiction, but this stuff was miserable to read.
The Damned Voyage by John Haas deserves a special note. It deserves it because the author actually has some good writing skills. However, he doesn't apparently realize that when paying homage to Lovecraft's Cthulhu-verse, it truly isn't necessary to include his racism. There was a completely-irrelevant-to-the-story white-savior subplot, including brown people that are either infantilized or villains.
All-in-all, this one was a waste of time that took me a lot longer to read than it should have because the two excellent stories were spaced just far enough apart to keep me hoping there would be another.
Anyway ... where to begin ...
I'll begin with the two good bits-Untrained Luck by Elise Stephens and Thanatos Drive by Andrew Dykstal. Elise's story impressed me with her ability to create such fully fleshed-out universe in a short story. She offered impressive depth for so little prose. I'd love to see more of the world she created. Andrew's post-apocalyptic short, likewise, created a tremendous and thought-provoking vision with few words.
The rest was mediocre at best. This anthology is full of stories that are readable but fall completely out of the mind almost as soon as finished. The exception being the ones that are simply just bad. I certainly could have lived without L. Ron's The Idealist. "Little known" classics are often "little known" for good reason. This particular gem was a prime example of stories that gave scifi a bad name during the Golden Era. I DNFed it. I also DNFed Dark Equations of the Heart by David Cleden and damn near every essay in the book. I don't generally DNF short fiction, but this stuff was miserable to read.
The Damned Voyage by John Haas deserves a special note. It deserves it because the author actually has some good writing skills. However, he doesn't apparently realize that when paying homage to Lovecraft's Cthulhu-verse, it truly isn't necessary to include his racism. There was a completely-irrelevant-to-the-story white-savior subplot, including brown people that are either infantilized or villains.
All-in-all, this one was a waste of time that took me a lot longer to read than it should have because the two excellent stories were spaced just far enough apart to keep me hoping there would be another.
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