The Razor's Edge

by Troy Carrol Bucher (Editor), Joshua Palmatier (Editor)

One man’s insurgent is another man’s freedom fighter…

From The Moon is a Harsh Mistress to The Hunger Games, everyone enjoys a good rebellion. There is something compelling about a group (or individual) who throws caution to the wind and rises up in armed defiance against oppression, tyranny, religion, the government—you name it. No matter the cause, or how small the chance, it’s the courage to fight against overwhelming odds that grabs our hearts and has us pumping our fists in the air.

Win or lose, it’s the righteous struggle we cherish, and those who take up arms for a cause must walk The Razor’s Edge between liberator and extremist. With stories by Blake Jessop, William C. Dietz, D.B. Jackson, Gerald Brandt, Sharon P. Goza, Walter H. Hunt, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, Kay Kenyon, Steve Perry, Seanan McGuire, Christopher Allenby, Chris Kennedy, L.E. Modesitt, Jr., Alex Gideon, Brian Hugenbruch, and Y.M. Pang.

Genres: Short Stories

307 pages, Paperback

First published June 15, 2018

About the author

Troy Carrol Bucher served thirty years in the U.S. Army, where assignments took him to three wars and places like Turkey, Albania, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait and Korea. His travels allow him to tap into a lifetime of experience working with diverse cultures and peoples, bringing multiethnic customs and realism with a distinct military flavor to his Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Troy holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and is a graduate of Seton Hill University's MFA in Writing Popular Fiction program. Before traveling the world for Uncle Sam, he spent his childhood traipsing around the Verde Valley in Arizona.

Reviews

[Alastair Patton]

Excellent collection of short stories to satisfy your Sci-Fi cravings

[Riju Ganguly]

The book was full of crisp and compact stories. Unfortunately too many of them tended to be rather heavy on jargons. As a result, only those remained in my mind that were special without being overtly dependent upon futuristic devices. They were:
1. Blake Jessop's 'Halo of Storms': A beautiful and haunting take on a future that bleeds easily into our visions shaped by 'Terminator' movies.
2. Walter H. Hunt's 'Eleven Days': Made me remember several classic 'Star Trek' episodes— always a very pleasing thing.
3. Steve Perry's 'Contender': Good, old-fashioned fistfight with brains.
4. Seanan McGuire's 'Rise Up, Rise Up, You Children of the Moon': Lovely lyrical demise of a world and beginning of something new.
5. Brian Hugenbruch's 'An Acceptable Risk to the Portfolio': Corporate warfare gets an altogether new meaning in this awesome story.
These stories are bound to provide you with a close shave with revolution, figuratively speaking.

[Maddie Mott]

Solid anthology featuring mostly new-to-me authors. The standout stories for me were “Halo of Storms”, about a soldier in a future where humans have mostly lost their war with drones, “An Acceptable Risk to the Portfolio”, about an organization that manages the accounts of villainous galactic empires and rebel alliances with some delightful trope riffs, and “The Liberator” by L E Modessit which left a strong impression despite a relatively straightforward story

[Tanya]

An unexpectedly fun collection. Standout stories include two new (to me) authors: Blake Jessop's elegant "Halo of Storms" and Brian Hugenbruch's outrageously funny “An Acceptable Risk to the Portfolio.”

[Pers]

This is the first Zombies Need Brains anthology I've bought that left me cold. Which is disappointing. I didn't find a single story that really spoke to me, nor any authors that me think that I wanted to read everything else they'd ever written or would write.