Stranded is a short story collection about being stranded in space. The three stories are written by Anne Bishop, Anthony Francis, and James Alan Gardner. Though each story deals with the same subject matter, they are each unique. The third story in the set is "Stranded" by Anthony Francis.
"Stranded" follows the adventures of a group of teenage space faring refugees and an ultra-advanced centauress named Serendipity. They meet on an unexpectedly hostile world which has been left fallow for a thousand years. The refugees are the leavings of a spaceship, once well populated, now run by a group teenagers having a civil war along gender lines. They crash while trying to find a place to repair their ship. The centauress is suffering from living in the shadow of a family members and wants to make her name out in the frontier, so she space hops until she is on a world that has long been ignored and buys it with her inheritance. Only to find that it has a history.
I think my favorite part of the whole story is the interplay between the Serendipity and her family. There is nothing as hard as trying to live up to the expectations you think others have of you. It must have been unbearable to try and carve out a spot in a family tree full of the exceptional. Behind that, the descriptions of space travel.
I gave this story a 3.5 out of 5.0 because while I found the story compelling and the characters interesting, it just didn't grab me the same way earlier stories in the book did. I find myself liking "A Strand in the Web" more. The entire book, all three stories, was well-crafted and interesting.
Pick up STRANDED at Belle Books HERE
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