An SF triple header with a theme of being stranded, this
exciting collection pits young people against system
failures, aliens and biological catastrophe.
James Alan Gardner wrote A Host of Leeches about Alyssa who
wakes up alone on a hospital space station. She has only
robots and her damaged symbiont to talk to, and discovers
that she is quarantined as a plague sufferer and the robots
are all war machines. Devoid of enemies and dumped here,
the robots have started pitting wits against one another,
causing peril for Alyssa as she tries to find a way to cure
the plague and get home.
A Strand in the Web by Anne Bishop is the longest tale, a
lovely story of a team of student restorers aboard a dying
city ship. The restorers travel around spreading life back
onto ravaged planets, building up ecologies and food webs
with painstaking work from stored genetic stock. But their
ship systems are breaking down and cannot be fixed. Willow,
responsible for trees, is fed up with the childish fellow
students who unleash a plague of deer and locusts on her
saplings, and requests an island of her own to work on -
never expecting her wish to be granted. When it is, she
and a boy who creates bees are determined to get the
biodiversity right, even as their own survival is
threatened.
Stranded by Anthony Francis tells of a squad of boys who
battle a squad of girls for control of their spaceship
after the adults have died. The alien invaders booted
humans off planet and into spaceships and now their ship
needs serious repairs. Sirius is a boy who tries to get
them to a safe dock. An alien girl, Serendipity, happens
to be on the planet he picks. She looks like a centaur and
when a spaceship crashlands her first thought is to lend
aid, but her arrival is misinterpreted and the boys and
girls assume she is an enemy. Stranded together, they have
to learn to get along.
STRANDED is a good read for anyone from young adult to
adult.
Three Great Authors-Three Great Science Fiction Stories A Strand In the Web New York Times Bestselling Fantasy Author Anne Bishop makes her U.S. debut in Science Fiction with this engaging futuristic novella. The Restorers travel the universe fulfilling a purpose handed down through the generations. They live and die aboard city-ships, never knowing the worlds they create and save. What begins as a disastrous training exercise in creating and balancing ecosystems becomes an unexpected fight for survival. The only hope may be the secret project of an untried Restorer team. A Host Of Leeches Award winning author James Alan Gardner pens a wonderfully imaginative tale in which a young woman wakes to find herself the sole human on an orbiting, mechanical space station. To find a way home, she must navigate the dangerous politics of war between opposing robot leaders. Stranded Popular urban fantasy writer Anthony Francis (Dakota Frost, Skindancer series) explores a clash of ethics and survival when a young, genetically engineered centauress from the ultra-advanced Alliance lays claim to a rare, strategic garden planet, only to find herself captured by a band of rag-tag Frontier refugees who've crashed their vintage ship on her unexpectedly hostile world.
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