Award winning independent Australian press coeur de lion publishing presents twenty-nine all new science fiction stories of humanity’s adventures out there, anywhere but Earth, featuring original works by Margo Lanagan, Sean McMullen, Richard Harland, and Kim Westwood among a galaxy of new and established Australian and overseas speculative fiction authors. 728 pages.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
This anthology is full of firsts for me. It was first lunched at my first spec-fic event just after I’d written my first short story. It’s also the first science fiction I bought on my Kindle. With all these first, I’m glad to report that it is a first rate book.
It’s also a big book, its physical size really stood out when I first saw it. I’m actually glad I was able to buy it on Kindle. Its size is because there are a lot of stories, 27 in all. With so many stories I’d expected to find some stories that I didn’t like, but I didn’t. There were some stories I thought I wasn’t going to like; for example, a story that started with a single nude man on a beach and a love story with a time twist. There were some stories I would have disliked if they weren’t so well written; for example, a story with an almost two clever twist and an intergalactic sex parasite. However, most stories I just enjoyed from the start to finish.
Just as there were no bad stories, no stories stood out as way above the rest. There’s a nice balance, no bad stories, many very good stories, no stories that over shadow the rest. I did have a favourite. It was a story of a man on a planet that has lost its stars who is sent by his boss to kill something in a town no one can find.
I’ve not mentioned any story titles on purpose. If you want to know which stories I’m talking about, buy the book.
It’s also a big book, its physical size really stood out when I first saw it. I’m actually glad I was able to buy it on Kindle. Its size is because there are a lot of stories, 27 in all. With so many stories I’d expected to find some stories that I didn’t like, but I didn’t. There were some stories I thought I wasn’t going to like; for example, a story that started with a single nude man on a beach and a love story with a time twist. There were some stories I would have disliked if they weren’t so well written; for example, a story with an almost two clever twist and an intergalactic sex parasite. However, most stories I just enjoyed from the start to finish.
Just as there were no bad stories, no stories stood out as way above the rest. There’s a nice balance, no bad stories, many very good stories, no stories that over shadow the rest. I did have a favourite. It was a story of a man on a planet that has lost its stars who is sent by his boss to kill something in a town no one can find.
I’ve not mentioned any story titles on purpose. If you want to know which stories I’m talking about, buy the book.
By Dave Versace
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
The first thing to say about the Anywhere but Earth anthology from Coeur de Lion Publishing is that it's a pretty damn thick slab of stories, over 700 pages in paperback form. There are 29 stories, most of them short but at least a few straying up into novellete territory, and most of them by Australian authors. As is the style of the times, it seems, this hefty collection of science fiction is a themed anthology. The title will give you the gist - these are all stories set far from the human homeworld. In many cases it's not mentioned at all, and a handful don't deal with recognisably human characters at all.
Unusually (in my experience) for a book like this, editor Keith Stevenson has not elected to insert himself in the work with an introductory foreword or in fact with commentary of any kind. What you get for your money - which is incredibly good value by the way - are the stories and short author bios and nothing else. I think it was the right call, mind you - these stories speak for themselves.
As with any collection of this size, there are some stories that didn't work for me, but overall the quality is exceptionally high. To my undertrained scientific eye the vast majority pay reasonable attention to keeping the science plausible and consistent, though one or two stretch the limits in order to shoot for a more lyrical effect (I'm thinking in particular here of Margo Lanagan's "Yon Horned Moon"). As a reader I tend to be much more concerned with good storytelling than strict fidelity to science, however, and Anywhere but Earth delivers. There is such a wealth of appetising material here, ranging from punchy little episodes like C J Paget's "Pink Ice in the Jovian Rings" and Alan Baxter's "Unexpected Launch" to troubling, expansive landscapes of alien worlds like Lee Battersby "At the End there was a Man" and Chris McMahon's "Memories of Mars" to violent military thrillers like Jason Nahrung's "Messiah on the Rock" and Brendan Duffy's "Space Girl Blues".
The quality of this collection is frankly astonishing, given its size - there are only two I can think of that I didn't like at all, and perhaps only two or three others about which I was ambivalent. Of the rest, I am hard pressed to pick a favourite, but I will mention that "Eating Gnashdal", Jason Fischer's horrific vision of a post-human culture, is inventively funny and creepy; Penelope Love's "SIBO" lives somewhere at the intersection of zombies and triffids and therefore rules; and Sean McMullen's "SPACEBOOK" pulls off a view of near-future social networking with a brilliant and unpleasantly plausible twist. And I could mention at least a dozen more stories which might be in my top three on a different day.
Anywhere but Earth is a massive, generous, impressive tome. The ideas on show are clever, funny, weird and sometimes deeply alien, but almost invariably worth your reading time.
Unusually (in my experience) for a book like this, editor Keith Stevenson has not elected to insert himself in the work with an introductory foreword or in fact with commentary of any kind. What you get for your money - which is incredibly good value by the way - are the stories and short author bios and nothing else. I think it was the right call, mind you - these stories speak for themselves.
As with any collection of this size, there are some stories that didn't work for me, but overall the quality is exceptionally high. To my undertrained scientific eye the vast majority pay reasonable attention to keeping the science plausible and consistent, though one or two stretch the limits in order to shoot for a more lyrical effect (I'm thinking in particular here of Margo Lanagan's "Yon Horned Moon"). As a reader I tend to be much more concerned with good storytelling than strict fidelity to science, however, and Anywhere but Earth delivers. There is such a wealth of appetising material here, ranging from punchy little episodes like C J Paget's "Pink Ice in the Jovian Rings" and Alan Baxter's "Unexpected Launch" to troubling, expansive landscapes of alien worlds like Lee Battersby "At the End there was a Man" and Chris McMahon's "Memories of Mars" to violent military thrillers like Jason Nahrung's "Messiah on the Rock" and Brendan Duffy's "Space Girl Blues".
The quality of this collection is frankly astonishing, given its size - there are only two I can think of that I didn't like at all, and perhaps only two or three others about which I was ambivalent. Of the rest, I am hard pressed to pick a favourite, but I will mention that "Eating Gnashdal", Jason Fischer's horrific vision of a post-human culture, is inventively funny and creepy; Penelope Love's "SIBO" lives somewhere at the intersection of zombies and triffids and therefore rules; and Sean McMullen's "SPACEBOOK" pulls off a view of near-future social networking with a brilliant and unpleasantly plausible twist. And I could mention at least a dozen more stories which might be in my top three on a different day.
Anywhere but Earth is a massive, generous, impressive tome. The ideas on show are clever, funny, weird and sometimes deeply alien, but almost invariably worth your reading time.
By Nathan
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a very impressive collection packed with short stories that are set - quite literally - anywhere but Earth. It's rare to come across an anthology with no weak lines, especially one that's so long, but I think Stevenson has managed to achieve this feat.
My favourite stories were "SIBO" by Penelope Love, "Rains of la Strange" by Robert Stevenson and "Messiah on the Rock" by Jason Nahrung.
Verdict - definitely check this one out.
My favourite stories were "SIBO" by Penelope Love, "Rains of la Strange" by Robert Stevenson and "Messiah on the Rock" by Jason Nahrung.
Verdict - definitely check this one out.
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