Where Worlds Collide, A Dark, Science Fiction Anthology by Rob Shelsky is a wonderful compendium of strange and marvelous stories. Whether you like aliens, alien worlds, post-apocalyptic civilizations, you'll find it here in Where Worlds Collide, by Rob Shelsky
Where Worlds Collide is an anthology of the best selling stories by author Rob Shelsky. These include stores previously published in such magazines as Jim Baen's Universe, AlienSkin Magazine, Aberrant Dreams Magazine, Continuum, and many others, and they are all superb examples of author, Rob Shelsky's work.
The stories deal with such issues as immortality, alien worlds too terrible to imagine, star ships lost in space, cozy murders in space, aliens on earth, dystopias, post apocalyptic plagues, and so much else!
For the discerning reader there are also thought provoking stories, such as Worm Sign, Shepherd of Babylon, and DreamTime. For the lover of space opera, there is a classic, Golden Science Fiction Age style novella, Bug-Eyed Monsters. This has had great reviews, including one where Mr. Shelsky is compared to none other than Ed Hamilton and his workks. So if you like fast action, bums, babes, and BEMs (Bug-Eyed Monsters), you'll love author, Rob Shelsky's, Bug-Eyed Monsters novella.
Excerpt
“Fool! The abbot will skin you alive. He’ll nail your stinking hide to the priory gate and I’ll be glad of it.” Proctor Emanuel D’Amato slung such abuse at Brother Montrose Tyler in an ongoing if uninspired tirade.
Tyler suffered these verbal harangues in a resigned silence as he trudged along ahead of the proctor. Tyler had hoped the physical effort of their high altitude hike, the necessary impediment of the breathing masks, would combine to exhaust the stocky D’Amato into a blessed stillness. No such luck. The proctor seemed energized, not enervated by his anger. It was as if D’Amato’s fury sprang from some inner fount of noxious stamina, some dark wellspring of venomous strength.
“You think you can flout rules, spread heresies, just because your daddy’s got money? Poor, little, rich kid--is that it?”
Determined not to answer back, Tyler just plodded on as he had been doing. As the two of them made their way up from the seminary dormitories, they had to pick their way around scattered boulders. Some were larger than houses. All were the morbid color of an old scab.
The frigid wind increased now, sounding like a host of abandoned souls, neglected specters moaning for an impossible redemption. It whined over the crumbling lips of various craters. These circular depressions pocked the lifeless landscape all about them, looked like so many pox scars of the plague on some dead giant’s face. Bitter cold, such sterile desolation; this was life on arid Mars.
They topped a small rise. Now, the abbey lay visible in the distance. Tyler squinted from the shadowed protection of his monk’s hood. A remote but brilliant sun blazed brassy out of a blood firmament. This caused the abbey’s sky-impaling towers to cast stark shadows. These stabbed out over the alien landscape, creating sharp contrasts, stygian angles, and darkest delineations.
D’Amato caught up with Tyler, glanced at him. “Scared now, are you?” he asked, his naturally gruff voice made even huskier by a certain feral eagerness.
Still not bothering to reply, Tyler continued to gaze ahead at the Quarantine’s headquarters. Despite a passing literary resemblance, the abbey was no Emerald City of Oz. Within those walls there was no magic to be found, real or bogus, imagined or otherwise. Inside, embodied in the almighty abbot, Tyler knew there reigned only a religiously caustic reality.
Professional Reviews
George Kempland, Autor
Review by: George Kempland on Jul. 30, 2010 : star star star star star
Where Worlds Collide, by Rob Shelsky, is a fascinating and wonderful series of short, science-fiction stories. Most are on a dark theme, just perfect for a rainy evening. They span a wide variety of science fiction subjects and sub-genres. Mr. Shelsky has an excellent capacity for creating believable universes and peopling them with very believable characters. His descriptions are so real! His included space opera, Bug-Eyed Monsters, a novella, is a great example of this. You would swear you were back in 1947 and being abducted by space monsters from the top of a New York skyscraper. Even the way the heroine and hero behave toward each other, the dialogue, the very way they talk is perfectly period, with Danny using words like “swell” instead of “awesome” or “cool.” For a fast-action novella, Bug-Eyed Monsters is right up there with the great authors of the Golden Age period. This story first appeared at Planetary Stories. Lt. Luna’s website referred to Bug-Eyed Monsters as “wonderful.” It certainly is.
Mr. Shelsky also included stories of a darker and more thought-provoking nature. One of my favorites, a reprint from an Aberrant Dreams issue, was Without Omens. I’ve always wondered about why we haven’t heard transmissions or signals from aliens over the years. In this anthology, Where Worlds Collide, Mr. Shelsky gives us a truly frightening answer in Without Omens. It left me thinking about it for hours afterward.
Rob Shelsky seems to have a real talent for dredging up our darkest issues, for handling our deepest psychological fears with regard to the future. From worlds too horrible to want to live on, even our own future Earth in a couple of cases, to societies that demand too much from the individual, Where Worlds Collide takes us on a trip to the extremes of human nature and that of the universe itself.
For instance, what would you do, personally, if you found that the universe only existed in reality for a few short centuries,or even just decades, and then simply ceased to be? Mr. Shelsky answers this question for us. Or, if you are trapped on a luxury liner lost in space, where do you go with your passengers? How do you keep them safe? What future can you hope for? Again, Mr. Shelsky gives us a very convincing portrayal of just such a scenario, frighteningly so.
My favorite stories? Well, personally, I loved them all, but Without Omens, Bug-Eyed Monsters, and the cozy, sci-fi, murder mystery, Blue Murder, along with another strangely moving story, Blue Flickers, were my very best favorites. I also have to admit that I loved Shiva, Mama Doc, and The Voodoo computer, a delightfully light piece, and one which made a great counterpoint to some of the darker tales. Another intriguing pieces was Shepherd of Babylon. And one of the best descriptive pieces I’ve ever read in science fiction, on a par with Robert Silverberg for such in my opinion, was Soap Bubbles.
Heck, there isn’t a mediocre story in this anthology! They’re all excellent. Do I recommend Where Worlds Collide, by Rob Shelsky? You betcha, I do! I give it the full rating of five stars, and let me tell you, it deserves it! It will leave you wondering about everything.
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