Orbital Spam: New-Classic Science Fiction Short Stories (New-Classic Sci-Fi)

A heads up on this third one I’ve read by this author – Orbital Spam is even better than Other Times and Zero 9-4.I see one of the other reviewers said Trevor Watts was “A Master Storyteller”. He is, and he’s getting better! I used to be wary of science fiction, but these short stories are full of my kind of real characters who talk to me and I get their humour and dilemmas and problems and solutions – or failures, sometimes.Something I especially like in all three books is the number of stories in which women have powerful roles. In SF, they used to be maidens in distress, then they were all superhero warriors. Now there’s a new genre. These stories have some female roles I can really empathise with. They’re funny, resilient and crafty; outwitting the men around them, not in shoot-everything-in-sight Star Wars stuff, but comfortable around the orbit, in command. The “female leads” in Orbital Spam are all so very different, from the young girls in “Mirador” and “Thank you, Mellissa”, to the women in “I can only take so much”, and “Somercotes and Beyond”.Wonderful! I’m looking forward to the next book, for Christmas.

Orbital Spam is a great selection of short SF stories. Some are set here on everyday Earth, where one woman develops wi-fi sense with extreme - and entertaining - results, and a worried man’s blackouts leave a little less of him here each time he passes out. Others explore futures that are so believable, where humans and aliens might be cooperating without any “Second Thoughts”, or they’re warring “Apace”.Whether funny or heart-droppingly sad, these stories are like no others I’ve read – I kept noticing an understated joke in a conversation, or a really unexpected twist that changed my perspective completely.Yes – I’d recommend this book to any SF readers who enjoy variety, a laugh and some of those unexpected “Don’t do it!” moments.

This is the second book by this author I have read and just like his Zero 9-4 offering Orbital Spam keeps the interest easily written in the same vein as his previous work. As before there are a number of different scenarios described and played out with some coming at the subject matter from an oblique angle. Well worth a read even if like me you prefer novels.