Review: Stories of Survival

This new collection is a great opportunity for you to get acquainted with the fiction being written halfway around the world

To honor the memory of beloved fantasy writer Aiki Flinthart, the Aussie Speculative Fiction Group has launched the charity anthology Stories of Survival, where various Australian authors have contributed their explorations of characters who stay strong against heavy circumstances.

The Storyteller by Kylie Fennell, a tale told by a tree so that others may keep telling it, makes an understated defense of the urgency of preserving and sustaining stories so that in turn they preserve and sustain us.

The Forgotten Sea by Louise Zedda-Sampson boasts an abundance of sensory detail and effective imagery. It begins as your standard haunted house story—but it turns out it's the visitor who carries her own ghosts.

Of Slaves and Lions by Pamela Jeffs follows an exile as they return to their childhood home, meditate on the survival of places and of the meanings they once carried, and wrestle with the ways the past can be a captivity.

Faltering by Monique McLellan is set in a resort town reduced to an artificial simulation of itself, where a returning tourist yearns to find something, even if it's just a shadow, that remains from the time of his first visit.

Maki by Nikky Lee tells the rescue of a beached orca in parallel with a married couple's struggle to rescue their relationship.

Tox Hunt by Tim Borella has as its protagonists the few remaining descendants of a vanity genetics fad that went horribly wrong, now on the run as fugitives in the Australian wilderness.

Three Tasks for the Sidhe by Leanbh Pearson is an exquisite fairy tale, composed with a fine ear for precise verse, about the steadfastness of a love capable of rising above the limitations of human mortality.

Alice's Hope by Jade Wildy is the adventure of a spy and treasure hunter on a desperate quest to deliver into the proper hands a mysterious painting that contains ancient secrets that could save her world.

Divine Engineer by Claire Fitzpatrick is the bad exception in an otherwise fine anthology. Its protagonist is flat and uninteresting, its succession of events does not reach the status of actual plot, and at its core is either an inscrutable metaphor or an appalling incomprehension of basic astronomy.

Spirit of the Koi by Lisa Rodrigues manages to contain a universe of bittersweet emotion in its short dialogue on grief, consolation, and the ancestry of space wolves.

Valuer of Souls by Kaybee Pearson turns the theme of heroic survival on its head and asks which extreme forms of human defiance would make us worthier of scorn than the forces of decay we claim to be fighting.

You Better Not Be Couriering Coriander by Brianna Bullen takes our COVID anxieties and gives them sparkling fairy wings in a fun, fast-paced trip from a land of ghosts to a city of mythic people just trying to get through their day.

Way-Bread Rising by Tansy Rayner-Roberts, another pandemic allegory, draws the reader back to early 2020, when we were all learning to bake our own bread, and adds to the mix a pinch of grandmotherly magic.

Bitter Brews by Kirstie Nicholson shifts the focus just a bit away from the iconic figure of the survivor and toward the set of adversities that force people to become survivors in the first place. This time, the protagonist finds a rescuer, but eventually learns to rescue themself from their rescuer.

Chocolate Cake and Carnage by Aiki Flinthart is a hilarious prison escape adventure where nothing goes according to plan.

Reading these stories is an eye-opening experience. They are in general very short, much more than what we usually call short fiction in American speculative magazines. However, their brief extension does not translate into Hemingwayian dryness: they are highly poetic, rich with lyric virtuosism. Curiously, they all have an open ending, which I don't know whether I should attribute to a feature of the Australian short story tradition or to the theme of this collection, as a way of signaling the possibilities that remain open even in moments of dread. Be that as it may, Stories of Survival is more than deserving of your attention. It can be finished in one afternoon, but it will stay with you for much longer.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Reference: Sheehan, Austin P., Rodrigues, Lisa, and Isaac, S. M. [editors]. Stories of Survival: a Charity Anthology by Australian Speculative Fiction [Deadset Press, 2021].

All proceeds from this book go to Melanoma Institute Australia.

Buy This Bundle: Humble Mozilla Bundle

Nine Indie Games, Pay What You Want, Demo in the Browser

What’s up with indie game bundles? They really started with the original Humble Bundle. The concept was simple: you get a handful of indie games, DRM-free, pay what you want. Since then, they’ve added Steam keys, different platforms, charity donations, choosing how to split your money, and other features, but the concept is generally the same. Indie game bundles might seem like a really bad business decision, and maybe it is, but it undoubtedly leads to more people playing your game than they would’ve if you waited for the next big Steam sale, or tried to market it by yourself.

I’ve bought a huge amount of indie games through indie game bundles, so I like to share the love and call attention to good bundles from time to time. Many times, friends of mine have missed out on indie game bundles because they’re almost always limited-time affairs, and that’s a shame. Not necessarily the time limit, but also the lack of awareness. I don’t actually gain anything from people playing more good indie games, as I have no connection to any game developer, but I love it when people discover great games because I recommended them.

Today, I want to call attention to the Humble Mozilla Bundle. Five games, eight if you beat the average, and nine if you pay more than $8. The charities benefiting from this bundle are Mozilla Foundation, CodeNow, and Maker Education Initiative. It ends on October 28th. The highlighted feature of this bundle is that all of the games can be demoed in Mozilla Firefox for free, in the browser, without any plugins. It’s really kind of neat, if not entirely practical, to see in action! But let’s talk about my three favorite games in this bundle.

FTL: Faster Than Light - FTL is like Battlestar Galactica the video game, if you only focused on the constant need to keep moving, and crew management. It’s a game where you control a starship with a small crew that’s running from a rebel fleet. You explore star systems, answer distress calls, trade for fuel or weapons, and blow up aliens, slavers, pirates, and rebels. In combat, you can pause time to issue orders for manning a particular station, or putting out fires, or fighting enemy boarding parties. It all sounds fairly complex, but FTL is one of those games that is easy to play, but hard to master. It’s a lot of fun if you love space sci-fi.

Super Hexagon - Super Hexagon is pure arcade fun. It has two controls, rotate left and rotate right. You use these to navigate your triangle through a fast moving maze. There are only three levels, but it is quite difficult, especially if you don’t have quick reflexes. The chip tunes soundtrack is really great, and perfectly fits the pace of the game.

Aaaaaaa! for the Awesome - This is a really weird game. It’s a first-person freefall simulator. The goal is to get close to as many obstacles as you can without touching them, while giving thumbs-up to supporters, the middle finger to detractors, and spray-painting particular obstacles. It’s totally score-driven, so if you do badly, you can still finish a level. Give the demo a shot, because I can’t possibly describe this in a way that makes sense. It’s really satisfying to get through a level with a huge score all through quick, fine movement. The quirky sense of humor in this game is fantastic.

Those three alone would make this bundle worth it to me for a minimum of $8, and then you would also get Zen Bound 2, Osmos, Dustforce DX, Voxatron, Democracy 3, and a secret ninth game that will probably be revealed very soon. And even if you only beat the average (currently $5.67), you’d still get eight good indie games for less than the price of most of those games alone. Check them out, and I hope you find them as enjoyable as I do!