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Title:
The Expanding Universe #1
Series:
Editor:
Craig Martelle
Rating: 1 of 5 Stars
Genre:
SF
Pages: 432
Words: 178K
Where
do I even start? That’s the thought that kept running through my
head as I waded through this pile of utter drek. Every new story
would bring me hope that maybe “this” writer would write a good
story and then the first paragraph would show me they were just as
much a talentless hack as the previous writers.
I
had seen Martelle’s name in the Larry Correia collection No
Game for Knights. I am always on the lookout for SF
anthologies of short stories and thought I’d give this a try. It
was a big mistake.
My
first clue to the impending disaster to come was the big fat
inclusion of Michael Anderle’s name on the front cover. He wrote
the introduction If you don’t know, Anderle is a whore who writes
bad space vampire fiction and will put his name on anything, written
by anybody. He has no talent, no shame and no limits. But he just
wrote the introduction I reasoned, I can’t blame the other authors
for that. I do now.
This
was published in 2016, and Martelle hadn’t written anything on his
own before ‘16 as well. He’s one of those turn and churn authors.
But even a mediocre author can be a decent editor, or so I thought.
Martelle also belongs to an organization of Indie Writers who support
each other. Apparently, what that means is that if one of them edits
an anthology, they will automatically include stories from other
writers in the organization, no matter how terrible or badly written
those stories might be. Martelle could have gone to any Science
Fiction forum on the internet, copy/pasted some of the fan fic on
there and he couldn’t possible have done a worse job than he did
with these stories.
Another
issue was that almost all of these stories took place in existing
universes or storylines of the writers and were not standalone
stories at all. They were prequels, sequels, side stories, to already
established storylines and were nothing more than advertisements by
the writers waving their wares obnoxiously in my face. Over half of
these had some sort of “and if you want to find out how the story
resolves, read the writers other books”. That really got my goat.
Another
issue is that many of these stories were not actually science
fiction. They were modern dramas set on a spaceship or had some
fantasy element. Putting a spaceship into a story doesn’t
automatically make it a science fiction story. I’m afraid that all
of these authors do not understand that very fundamental concept and
I’m also afraid that they will never learn it. Because they are all
chowderheads with no talent.
The
lack of skill here was atrocious. I mentioned internet forum fan
fiction early and this is that level of writing. These stories are
the things you write when you are practicing to learn the very basic
basic of writing. None of these stories should have seen the light of
day. Some were definitely better than others, but not a single one of
them deserved to be in print. There’s a reason these writers belong
to that organization that Martelle belongs to.
Then
you had the moral content. I knew going in that since this was
published in 2016, that the chances of at least one of these authors
would be some woke dill head pushing a perverted agenda was high. I
made it almost to the end and was pleasantly surprised that
perversion hadn’t reared its ugly head when bam. Sho’ nuff, one
writer just had to add it to their story, for no apparent reason
either. It was the literal expression of “check box” writing.
Finally,
I want to highlight the worst two of the stories here.
Taken
for a Walk describes itself
thusly:
Worlds
Revealed has this for its intro:
“The
short story that follows is Justin’s teaser for a novel he hopes to
one day write in what he thinks will be something like Alien meets
The Matrix meets Braveheart. The short story is at times silly, but
leads into a very serious moment and situation”
The
only good thing about this story was that I think it was the shortest
of the collection. It was just plain bad.
“This
is a brand new story in the Alpha Alien Abduction Tales series. It
starts out with the couples we know from the first two books in the
series, Worlds Away and Worlds Collide. But it quickly goes back to
the summer of 1947 when a spaceship crashed in Roswell, New Mexico.
Venay’s grandfather was the Commander of the ship that was involved
in that nightmare. But it wasn’t the V’Zenians, or even the
Zateelians, who crashed on Earth! You can expect to learn the true
story of the Roswell Aliens, and who they really were.”
When
I read that intro, I immediately made a note in my kindle along the
lines of “Frak No!” Aliens abduct human women, use their mind
powers to make them fall in love with them and then marry and mate
them. Just for the record, the author is a woman. This is not some
man’s fantasy, it’s a woman’s fantasy.
To
end, I had several of these collections lined up, but after this
Titanic level of reading disaster, I’m dumping them like a pile of
nuclear waste.
★☆☆☆☆
Table
of Contents
Fear
Peace - Craig Martelle
Taken
for a Walk Justin Sloan
Fall
to Earth TJ Ryan
Blue
Eyed Devil Spencer Pierson
Those
Who Breathe Under the End James Osiris Baldwin
Pilgrim
Andrew Dobell
DROP
Andrew Broderick
Worlds
Revealed J.L. Hendricks
Within
a Phrygian Sky Jim Johnson
And
the Kat Came Back RJ Crayton
The
Signal and the Boys Felix R. Savage
Smuggler
for Hire Bradford Bates
Light
in the Dark H.J. Lawson
Origins
of the Gemini Project E.R. Starling
An
Attitude Adjustment Taki Drake
The
Iron and the Mud James Aaron
The
Last Human: Fire of Truth E.E. Isherwood
New
Beginnings Paul C. Middleton
