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A review by gbralph
Year's Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy, Vol. 1 by Octavia Cade, Melanie Harding-Shaw, Grant Stone, Sean Monaghan, M. Darusha Wehm, Andi C. Buchanan, Marie Hodgkinson, James Rowland, A.J. Fitzwater, J.C. Hart, Isabelle McNeur, Toni Wi, Dave Moore, Mark English
5.0
In this collection, Marie Hodgkinson has brought together 13 fantastic short stories from Kiwi authors, the first in an annual anthology series.
I loved the variety of speculative fiction on display here, stories set in worlds both fantastical and familiar – some eerily so. Stories touching on topics that feel particularly close to home in the midst of the climate crisis and Covid-19 pandemic.
There are the more everyday struggles, like one character’s hunt for sanitary products, but set in the post-apocalyptic world of A.J. Fitzwater’s Logistics. The feeling of wonder in the exploration of a strange planet in Sean Monaghan’s The Billows of Sarto. Or the Auckland we’re familiar with, but with something uneasy running just below the surface in Grant Stone’s A Brighter Future. We’re immersed in the ancient Venice of James Rowland’s The Glassblower’s Peace, where a surplus son assists an elderly woman with her empire-defending magic. And we experience the joys and hazards of dating while trialling new technology in Melanie Harding-Shaw’s Common Denominator.
I took something from every story in this collection and cannot wait for Volume 2.
I loved the variety of speculative fiction on display here, stories set in worlds both fantastical and familiar – some eerily so. Stories touching on topics that feel particularly close to home in the midst of the climate crisis and Covid-19 pandemic.
There are the more everyday struggles, like one character’s hunt for sanitary products, but set in the post-apocalyptic world of A.J. Fitzwater’s Logistics. The feeling of wonder in the exploration of a strange planet in Sean Monaghan’s The Billows of Sarto. Or the Auckland we’re familiar with, but with something uneasy running just below the surface in Grant Stone’s A Brighter Future. We’re immersed in the ancient Venice of James Rowland’s The Glassblower’s Peace, where a surplus son assists an elderly woman with her empire-defending magic. And we experience the joys and hazards of dating while trialling new technology in Melanie Harding-Shaw’s Common Denominator.
I took something from every story in this collection and cannot wait for Volume 2.