| First,
I love short story collections so it's hard for me not to
enjoy one. They're like getting a literary box of candy. You
don't know what you're going to get from each piece. In Anthology
1, I was pleasantly surprised by each piece. Though some
of the stories felt like something I would have enjoyed more
if they were part of a larger work, even as bites, they held
my interest and kept me thinking after the story was done.
One of my favorites involved sentient spaceships that merged
with human minds, changing both the spaceships and the humans
in profound ways. It was a beautiful idea, but the author
turned our attention to the dark side. What happens to the
ships and the people when they don't link correctly, when
they washout of the program, but can never really be normal
again? And when a sentient ship is cleansed of consciousness,
is that like murder? The story left me thinking about the
world the author created, as all good short stories do. The
collection is widely varied in voice, approach and content,
but all the stories were strong and compelling. I found it
an impressive collection. |
