Crossed Spaces
Editor Lynne Stringer and RA Stephens
Publication Date:
31 Mar. 2021
Format:
Paperback / softback
ISBN 9781761110283
A handsome clockmaker fixes a broken time machine to help a cursed lady. A young scientist betrays his people to protect an alien species. A girl bonds with her new technological helper and sees in him a personality and a soul. A boy finds his whole life changing when his best friend writes in a mysterious notebook. A crew aboard a settlement spaceship discover that sleeping passengers have gone missing.
Come on a journey of exploration with aliens, spacecrafts, bewildering technology and even ghosts. There's friendship, strong families and romance. In these 16 stories humanity is pushed to its limit and forced to question what is most important in life.
Information
Book Type: Junior HighAge Group: 13 years +
Traffic Lights: Green/Amber
Class Novel: Yes
Good Reads Rating: 4.5/5
Literary Rating: 4.5/5
Review
This collection of 16 short stories packs a serious punch. The stories are a blend of different voices and settings, but all of them examine the world through the lens of speculative fiction.
Faulty Connection is the story of a future where people live in VR, and a young boy begins to realise the importance of true connection. Designer Ghost follows a young girl as she realises that technology can have a soul when an AI designed to help her learn makes a mistake. Both these stories discuss our relationship with technology from different angles -- and the message that comes through is the importance of compassion and connection.
In Traitor, a man discovers alien life but chooses not to report it, believing that peace would have been abandoned for colonisation and destruction. And in Luminescent Love, two settlers on the outer world are divided by the moral dilemma of conserving or using a rare resource. In these stories, the importance of conservation is set against the lure of consumption -- and the characters make the right choice rather than the easy choice.
Arrogance is Death follows a young time traveller who learns to put her faith in the future rather than the past when her attempt to save humanity goes awry. In Fetching the Flame, a young girl begins to question the scarcity her band lives in, realising that innovation and ingenuity will help them break the cycle of dwindling resources. In Ebenezer's Café, people born on a spaceship -- originally intended to colonise other planets -- return to an Earth that has healed itself, determined to do it right this time. In Light Club, an Android society lives powered by dim blue flames, until Linton has a dream and goes in search of golden fire. The Choice follows an immortal who chooses to leave the known world behind for the promise of adventure over the Forbidden Sea. In these stories, the narrators realise the importance of building a better future starting in the present -- rather than getting caught up in nostalgia.
The Clockmaker and the Time Machine is the story of a clockmaker who helps to rebuild a broken time machine so that the woman he's falling for can travel to a time where her superpowers can be cured. But in doing so, he dooms his sister to a life of secrecy -- she also has superpowers. In the automated world of Over and Out -- ruled by a shadowy centralised government -- a PI gets caught in a game of cat-and-mouse between two rebels fighting for freedom. Both stories discuss the actions taken by people in desperate situations, and the injustice that forces their hand.
The True Written Life of Ed Specolta follows a young man who discovers his life is being rewritten by his friend and takes control of his own narrative. In Romano's, the ghost of a violin maker helps a violinist conquer her performance anxiety. In The Rocksway Flight the young pilot of a gondola is forced to re-evaluate her priorities when a passenger's safety is threatened on what should be a routine cargo run. The Seeking of Javan is from the perspective of a young girl who has been raised in a compound to purge emotion, after she learns the meaning of family, culture, and home. These stories all examine motivation, and passion, the love that propels people forward -- and especially the place of stories and art in peoples' lives.
Many of these themes are brought together in Endymion. The "Free Ticket" system offers a fresh start to those unable to pay for passage to a newly colonised planet -- in exchange for indentured servitude. Leah discovers that this offer is a lie and that the Free Ticket passengers are killed after they've served their purpose. She decides that since she's going to die anyway, she may as well take as many with her as she can by her vessel into another.
Throughout the book, two major themes become clear: conservation/environmentalism, and connection. We must have compassion and love for one another, and resilience enough to fight for justice, truth, and our own future on Earth, in order to survive.
Themes
speculative fiction, science fiction, fantasy, time travel, historical, space travel, alien life, technology, conservation, colonialism, sustainability, environmentalism, choices, romance, stories, culture, family, home, justice, equality
Content Notes
1. Adults drinking beer (p. 5). Brief mention that narrator was self-medicating her anxiety using alcohol -- she is going to AA for her addiction (p. 133-134). 3. Mild kissing (p. 84, 106, 119, 191, 196). 3. Violence: Narrator remembers that she would hold children at knife-point and mug them -- this an expression of the depths she was driven to by awful living conditions (p. 14-15). She also remembers being arrested (p. 15). Non-graphic description of a car accident (p. 89). Mention that the owner of the violin shop died when the shop burnt down (p. 133). 4. Spiritual: A girl makes friends with a ghost and sees him repeatedly throughout her life (p. 126 -- 138). Hologram AIs in the form of animals, used as learning aides, are referred to as "ghosts". Mention of a witch (p. 66).
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