Extinction Is Forever

by Louise Lawrence

Is the Death Flower, which feeds on human blood and misery, the only way to control people's inhumanity?

Will Medoc, a fur trader, continue to travel from planet to planet destroying entire species?

Can Stephen return from the future with a video-tape of post-holocaust London and so prevent the onslaught of World War III?

Danger, romance and tragedy - and a disturbing hint of menace - make this an utterly compelling collection of science fiction stories.

Genres: Young Adult

160 pages, Paperback

First published July 18, 1991

About the author

Elizabeth Holden, better known by her pen name Louise Lawrence, is an English science fiction author, acclaimed during the 1970s and 1980s.

Lawrence was born in Leatherhead, Surrey, England, in 1943. She became fascinated with Wales at a young age, and has set many of her novels there. She left school early on to become an assistant librarian. She married and had the first of her three children in 1963. Her departure from the library, she recalls, gave her the potential to turn toward writing: "Deprived of book-filled surroundings, I was bound to write my own."

Reviews

[SBC · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this collection of science fiction short stories by Louise Lawrence. There were interesting repeated themes (common to teen SF of the 80s and 90s!) of humanity destroying the Earth and some really interesting explorations of what it means to be human and how humanity can become better in multiple different ways.

1 The Inheritors - an interesting starting choice as I think this was probably the weakest of the collection. It is the story of a girl raised in a cult that worships an alien being who tells them how to make a better world, since the real world is dying of pollution and apathy, and of what happens when a boy comes to join them from the city.
2 Extinction is Forever - I really liked this story of a time-traveller from the 90s who finds a future world destroyed by apocalypse and a new human species that lives in the sea (it also contributes to the cool picture of the cover of my edition). He has different priorities to the people of the future.
3 A Love Song for Arni - an interesting story of a girl raised on a starship who longs to become a great musician like her hero, Arni, who wins all the interstellar song contests. But Arni isn't all that admirable in reality and she has to question her life purpose.
4 The Death Flower - A student is caught up in an interstellar government plot to get a death flower from one planet to teach the inhabitants of another how to be wise and stop killing and torturing each other and the world.
5 The Silver Box - a sf 'ghost story' about a boy and girl from two times talking to each other - but can the future be changed?
6 Mackenna's Patch - quite a dark story about a future in which the gap between rich and poor is insurmountable because political protest is not possible due to the robopolice surveillance
7 Rigel Light - my favourite story of the collection about a girl raised alone by a group of humans growing vegetables and fruit to send out to miners. The native inhabitants of the planet are used as slaves and misunderstood by all but her.
8 All is One - a nice little story about a boy who is stuck as a servant to a interstellar fur trader that he hates and a cat-person who has a different kind of consciousness

[giorgi · Rating 4 out of 5]

ho letto questo libro per scuola non pensavo mi piacesse invece è stato il contrario sono diversi capitoli non collegati tra loro ma come base hanno un’immaginazione di come potrebbe essere il futuro

[Vinny C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

IDK