In which a USN Commander, RIDING THE RED HORSE contributor, and new Castalia House Associate comments on the new military science fiction anthology:
If having your assumptions challenged and your mind blown could upset your delicate little psyche, you’re gonna want to click away right now.
If harrowing scenes of speculative, futuristic combat or stories about the men and women who fight for something greater than themselves fill you with dread, flee from here.
If center-right positions, hard science, or frank discussions of our past mistakes and future concerns make you want to hide behind your momma’s petticoats, you’d best stick to your internet safe-zone with all countervailing opinions neatly blocked away.
If the phrase “Trigger Warning” is something you watch out for and is itself a potential trigger for bad-thought . . . yeah, I got a book you’re gonna want to avoid.
However, if you can handle it and are a fan of kick-ass science fiction, of near-prescient analysis on what our future holds, or of some of the best writing you’ll see all year by great authors both new and old, well, for you I have your new favorite book….
Read the rest of it there. What do I mean by “new Castalia House Associate”? What that means is that Thomas May’s very good first contact novel is now available in DRM-free EPUB and MOBI for Kindle format from the Castalia House store for $3.99. And by “first contact”, I should probably point out that I mean “violent space combat” with one of the most unusual alien races yet encountered in science fiction. If you enjoyed “Within This Horizon”, then you’re going to want to read A Sword Into Darkness.
The reaction to the new anthology has been almost uniformly positive, which is encouraging, but I have to say that I was probably most amused by these two comments at Instapundit’s.
- Tom Kraman and Vox Day…lemme guess, more of that namby-baby, Dem/Lib/SJW kumbaya fluff… said no one ever.
- Kratman AND Vox Day? Is the publisher TRYING to make SJW heads into IEDs?
The collection is Blue SF, to be sure, but it is moderately less Deep Navy Blue SF than you might expect, mostly because unlike the gatekeepers of Pink SF, Tom and I don’t believe in ruthlessly enforcing our ideological perspective on every contributor. As Larry Correia has gone to considerable pains to point out in the past, it is the story is the point, not the moral or the ideological object lesson. And the general conclusion appears to be that these are very good stories indeed.