Tales From The Fathomless Abyss [Kindle Edition]

Mike Resnick (Author), Jay Lake (Author), Cat Rambo (Author), Mel Odom (Author), J.M. McDermott (Author), Brad Torgersen (Author), Philip Athans (Author, Editor)

Book Description

“At the heart of it, science fiction and fantasy authors are at play in the fields of wonder, fueled by “what if” and held hostage by the people, places and problems that populate our wacky, slightly-offset imaginations and spill out of us in Story. And if you love Story, you’re in for a solid meal here. And this is just the appetizer. Over the next few months, the real meal begins as the individual titles make their way into the world.”
--Ken Scholes, from his introduction

Combine six of the finest fantasy authors working in the genre today: Mike Resnick & Brad R. Torgersen, Jay Lake, Mel Odom, J.M. McDermott, and Cat Rambo, and mix in veteran editor and New York Times best-selling author Philip Athans, and what comes out is the Fathomless Abyss: a wild new fantasy world where the laws of physics only work against you, there’s no way out, and time means nothing.

This is the world of the Fathomless Abyss, a bottomless pit that opens who-knows-when onto who-knows-where, just long enough for new people from a thousand different worlds and a million different times to fall in and join the fight for survival in a place where the slightest misstep means an everlasting fall into eternity.

Tales from the Fathomless Abyss features six new short stories, and it’s only the beginning. From here, each author will branch out to spin a series of new books sharing this impossible, explosive, infinite setting.

Your fall into the Fathomless Abyss begins here.

Product Details

• File Size: 385 KB
• Print Length: 125 pages
• Publisher: Athans & Associates Creative Consulting (December 5, 2011)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B006IU9A7A
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #268,585 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Exercise in Collective Storytelling December 13, 2011

By Jelani Sims

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

There is a world out there, a bottomless pit akin to a wormhole, that opens up throughout the universe, crowning on an infinite amount of planets and worlds. When the pit opens up, people of varying species, both human and alien, fall into the pit, and are forced to make their homes in the depths. These people are both human and alien, and they come from both the future and the past. The abyss is a hodgepodge of everything that is, and those who fall in see things they could have never fathomed on their own worlds.

Authors Philip Athans, J. M. McDermott, Mel Odom, Mike Resnick, Brad R. Torgersen, Cat Rambo, Jay Lake, and Mats Minnhagen have created a unique fantastical world that is a lot of fun to read about and imagine. Furthermore, it's a wonderful experiment in collective storytelling that hopefully many more authors will try in the future. TFTFA is only the beginning. Each of these authors will release a novella over the next year that continues the story of the characters introduced in this short story collection.

Philip Athans introduces Keegan O'Malley, an unfortunate miner from Vienna, Illinois who falls into the pit during the summer of 1988. After nearly dying, he wakes up to find that his should has been bound with the woman Ariel, a person he doesn't even know.

J. M. McDermott brings the story of Glimmergling, an alien creature living in the abyss who experiences the sting of betrayal at the hands of his own wife and people.

Mel Odom tells the story of young Otetiani, who falls in love with a fugitive woman when the abyss crowns on a mysterious planet.

Mike Resnick and Brad R. Torgersen introduce Najlee, a girl who lives deep in the abyss. Her desire to see the world above leads her to make a harrowing climb up the abyss.

Cat Rambo tells the strange story of the genoid race, creatures who travel through the abyss looking for objects that represent various emotions.

And Jay Lake tells the story of Attestation, who has a life long dream of creating a hot air balloon and floating up the abyss.

The stories in this collection were engaging and interesting, even though they are all setups for the upcoming novellas. Some of them are strong on plot while others focus on introducing the world and unique surroundings. The entire collection does a great job of building excitement for what these authors will do next as they continue to play in this world. This is an entertaining read that expands the mind and opens up new possibilities in the world of fantasy.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A fun collection December 9, 2011

By treeoflife

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

I'm the type of reader who typically goes for the safe bet... ie top sellers printed by major publishing houses, with reems of reviews to peruse before making a purchase. As a reader of Athan's blog however, I knew the guy had the know how to take on something like this and not disappoint.

Tales From The Fathomless Abyss does not disappoint.

This is a professional, polished collection of very original and very different short stories. I've read other fantasy and sci-fi short story collections, and TFTFA is every bit as good as any of them. There's a very seasoned editor at the helm here, and it shows.

With any collection, there are bound to be some stories that one likes better than others. Of the six here, three I thought were quite good, and three were decent-but-not-great. The setting (the Fathomless Abyss) is interesting for various shorts, although I wonder how it'll do in a full-length novel (there are several novels based on this setting on the way, so I hear). I guess time will tell.

Overall, 4 stars. It's an entertaining read, and well worth the $5 it costs.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Worthshile read December 29, 2011

By G. Huntman

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

It was with no small amount of glee that I downloaded Tales From The Fathomless Abyss, as I was instantly caught up in the idea of a shared world project, via a posting on Jay Lake's blog. He advertised it because he was one of the authors, one of the world-builders. Basically there is a wondrous core concept of this world (so to speak) - there is this whopping great big vertical shaft that appears to have no bottom. It always exists, but periodically the top of it opens in some random where and when. Including alien planets - not just Earth. Stuff fall down - not everything all the way. Creatures, people, plants, you name it, can live on the inner face of the Abyss, or in tunnels, ledges etc. A fantastic tableaux for writers to spin stories on.

And so Philip Athans, the central control in this project, gathers a stellar collection of writers, including himself, and spin six stories: aside from Philip, we have J.M McDermott, Mel Odom, Mike Resnick/Brad R. Torgersen (co-writers), Cat Rambo, and Jay Lake. This was another reason to purchase this e-tome. These are 'tales' and what will follow will be longer works, published as single monographs - my understanding is that they will be roughly novellas in size. I will certainly partake of some of them.

Before I get into a qualitative spiel regarding the tales themselves, I want to mention two things about the ebook that annoyed me. Firstly, being an ebook as a sole platform (as opposed to print), the quality of the formatting was terrible. While they got the hyperlinks right, the centering of stuff needing centering, and the full justification - why in hell didn't they indent the first lines of the paragraphs? It amazes me they didn't. It really was distracting and in places even lowered the impact of some of the passages. Secondly, only the last two stories in my estimation (Rambo and Lake) were truly self-contained tales. The others were preambles to bigger stories. While this, on the surface, is not necessarily a bad thing, I felt mildly cheated that four of the six stories didn't quite have endings. I think this should have been made more clear to the reading public.

Having said what I said about 'incompleteness' of the first four stories, I should state for the record that all the stories were well written. I didn't expect any less from seasoned and talented writers. However, it does rankle me that the first four stories were prologues to other stories. Another thing that rankled me a bit, in terms of the plots, was that such a large percentage of the writers chose to write with alien races as the protagonists. Each were done admirably - in the case of Cat Rambo, stupendously well - but from an editorial point of view I just felt that it was a bit lop-sided, out of balance in terms of overall content. This was an editorial weakness, not a writing failing.

To some extent, by lack of coincidence, I'm sure, the two stories that were complete stories: Rambo's A Querulous Flute of Bone, and Lake's That Which Rises Ever Upward (I can spot a Lake title anywhere!), were also the best tales in the anthology by far. They were SHORT STORIES, by any decent definition, and had a lot to say, and to entertain. Rambo's take on the world, the microcosm of the protagonists and antagonists (in fact, showing there is a blurry line there), is nothing short of uber-unique, and her command of descriptive narrative was an absolute pleasure to read. Jay's story is also quite unique (on a par with the other four stories) but he constructs a wondrous short-epic journey through a man's life, spinning all manner of emotions in such a short number of words. These two authors were worth the purchase.

I don't want to belittle completely the other authors. Each story had me captured in their prose and the quality of their writing. But I...well, I've already said it. I have also deliberately left the detail out of each story so the reader can read them sans spoilers.

All in all, this work is good, within a growing world-building project that really is already great. Rambo and Lake's stories are gold.

Four stars.