Beyond the Sun
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
Colonists take to the stars to discover new planets, new sentient beings, and build new lives for themselves and their families. Some travel years to find their destination, while others travel a year or less. Some discover a planet that just might be paradise, while others find nothing but unwelcoming aliens and terrain. It's not just a struggle for territory but a struggle for understanding as cultures clash, disasters occur, danger lurks and lives are at risk. Eighteen stories of space colonists by both leading and up and coming science fiction writers of today. Mike Resnick spins a tale of aliens who find Earth future diverse and surprising as they plan an invasion. Grandmaster Robert Silverberg examines what happens when Jews tired of fighting for their homeland start over on a planet then must deal with a dybbuk (spirit) and aliens who wish to convert to Judaism. Autumn Rachel Dryden has colonists threatened by alien animals which burst out of shells on the ground like piranhas ready to feed on flesh. Jason Sanford has Amish colonists on New Amsterdam finding their settlement and way of life threatened by a comet and the English settlers who want to evacuate them. And a new story from Hugo and Nebula-winner Nancy Kress.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Drawing on the skills of a diverse assortment of women and men, from luminaries to the justly obscure, Schmidt has assembled a blandly inclusive anthology whose stories have but two points in common: some form of interstellar setting and an oddly archaic sensibility. Jamie Todd Rubin's "Flipping the Switch" is a story of twin-paradox-facilitated workaholic alienation. Mike Resnick's labored "Observation Post" attempts comedy about cultural misunderstandings. Although many of the stories, like Jean Johnson's "Parker's Paradise" and Simon C. Larter's "Inner Sphere Blues," are quite recent, they share the dated ideas of such venerable stories as Robert Silverberg's Disco-Era "The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV." Similarly, the Resnick could have come from any moment in his nearly half-century-long career. Schmidt has inadvertently provided a handy example of the essentially nostalgic variety of SF.
