Rest, weary space traveller....
Can it really be a year since Agent Rob, Agent Johnny and Adam Smith watched Unearthly Science Fiction roar off into the night sky over Edinburgh never to be seen nor heard from again...?
And yet, just when Agent Rob had finally given up all hope he happened to receive a transmission from the lovely people at The Future Fire. It seems they had tuned their frequencies to 'far out' and successfully intercepted a communication from our lonely satellite somewhere over London in November 2017....
'Steve Mason and 'Olgur Zen' by John G. Miller
'Codename: Cosmos' by John G. Miller and Rob Miller
....and boy did they like it! It's hard to deny that sending an unmanned space mission out into the publishing universe is a long, lonely (and more or less) thankless task, so it was a real pleasure to read N.A. Jackson's in-depth review....
'Maria 3' by Rob Miller
"In some ways the fiction is all too earthly, collectively the stories evoke a grungy, malfunctioning world, disturbingly similar to our own in which the characters wrestle with the pointlessness of life or are consumed by ambition or bitterness."
'Splashdown one' by Adam J. Smith
In particular Adam J. Smith's 'Splashdown One' was singled out as "One of the most memorable pieces in the collection" while Ian Wark's 'The Pod' was praised for being "one of the more resolved of the stories... benefitting from its length."....
'Agent X4 and The Deep Fix' by John G. Miller
Furthermore, the "amazing illustrations", successfully "evoking the luridly coloured science fiction mags of the sixties", lead the reviewer to comment "It’s not often that illustrations complement fiction so well, but here they do and they help to give the magazine a unified look."....
'Planet Of The Jakey' by Neil Beattie
The reviewer concludes that the collection is "an intelligent and irreverent glimpse into how humanity may grapple and grope its way onwards. In the conception of these authors, we may head for the stars but we’ll be taking along all the trappings of dysfunctional late capitalism."
'Steve Mason and 'Olgur Zen' by John G. Miller
It's great to see our wee book receive such a thoughtful and encouraging review, justifying Agent Rob and Adam J. Smith's early decision to intentionally go (if not, er, 'rub up somewhat') against Agent Johnny's (more traditional) grain - this collection couldn't simply be another run through of well worn riffs on the favoured SF of our youth. True, it might have been a somewhat bumpy ride until we cleared the atmosphere, but a write-up like this made the frequent bends all very much worth it....
Anyone who fancies heading to the dark side of the moon with us can book a ticket >> here....
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