(Drivebycuriosity) - I like to buy anthologies of science fiction short stories. Usually I get a lot of interesting ideas for little money. The collection "The Lowest Heaven" attracted me with a price tag of below $5 for the Kindle version (amazon.).
The book - edited by the national Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London -, contains 17 stories (370 pages). I finished reading 5 of them.
I enjoyed "Golden Apple" by Sophia McDougall. A couple breaks into a laboratory to steal sunlight which has been transformed "into a solid object". What do they purpos with the strange burglary?
There were more passable stories:
In "The Jupiter Files" by Jon Countenay Grimwood a private detective is chosen by the US government, to meet an alien who offers an important deal. The funny story, set in San Francisco around 1950, is strongly influenced by Philip K. Dick.
"A Map of Mercury" by Alastair Reynolds describes the encounter with cyborg artists who have adapted to live in the vacuum of space. It is not one of his best stories, but interesting anyway.
The complicated novella "Ashen Light" by Archie Black describes a murder which happened on a terraformed Venus. The plot reminds a bit of Truman Capotes`s novel "Cold Blood" and could have happened on earth, but it is blended with an elaborate descriptions of a life on a transformed sister planet.
"The Comet´s Tale" by Matt Jones is an old fashioned story about a group of people who got talked into leaving earth on a comet. Entertaining but no science fiction at all.
The book isn´t as strong as the Year´s Best collections by Gardner Dozois (driveby) but I had to pay per story I read and liked just one dollar.
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