Paul Perry’s Reviews > The Galaxy Chronicles > Status Update

Nick Webb's 'The Stars That Bind' reminds me of the huge scale, big scientific idea SF Brian Aldiss would sometimes write. Good stuff.

'Earth Fall' by Raymond L Weil is an Earth invasion story and is eye-rollingly terrible. L Ron Hubbard bad.

'The Immortals: Kronos Valley' is a superior SF war story by David Adams, again someone u may seek out again

'Symbiont Seeking Symbiont' is a nice little contact tale, I'll definitely be seeking more of Jennifer Foehner Wells work

'The Kasant Objective' by Chris Reher has some nice ideas but not very well written. Very little character differentiation and rather telegraphs the denouement.

'Keep Off The Grass' by Felix R. Savage is easily the best story so far. This neat tale of a young comet miner has the subtle world presentation and imagination sadly lacking in most of the previous stories. As many of the other, this is written as a taster for the author's other work, and is the only one that tempts me to explore further. Good stuff, well realised, well written, human and quite funny.

'Apogee' by G.S. Jennsen is a rather flat, heavy handed effort about Earth colony planets starting a revolutionary war

I always used to stick with bad books in the hope they'd improve. while I no longer do so with novels, short story collections are different, and 'Falling' by Pippa DaCosta is a distinct improvement, a Firefly-like vignette of spacers outside the law.

(Excelsior continued) This, along with the background of our main character, is explained TWICE in the first few pages. Confusingly explained, there is also a cold war between East and West. Scott likes to throw in lots of acronyms (and explain them) and show his working, some of which is so off as to be laughable. Found myself skimming, even this short story.

Second story also pretty terrible. 'Excelsior' by Jaspar T. Scott is set in a future where the world is split between the Geners of the North, who tweak their genome for perfection and effective immortality, and the natural-born and poor 'degenerates' of the south. The only ways to move North are money, or serving in the Geners' army, as they are loathe to risk their immortality to violence...