Synopsis
“An impressive collection…with a surprising number of pieces that feel just prescient enough to worry about.” —Rebecca E. Treasure, author and Managing Editor of Apex Magazine
Limelight is a collection of over twenty high-concept dark science fiction tales from near and far futures.
The title novelette—about a young woman brought back from near death by experimental tech, only to find her parents had her altered before she woke—anchors this collection which features five new exclusive stories alongside popular past works.
Lyndsey’s work explores the bright potential and the dark reality of our near and far futures through the lenses of connection and loneliness, love and heartbreak, autonomy and exploitation, desire and greed, wonder and despair. If you’ve ever imagined alternate futures, craved answers to the mysteries of the universe, or feared what might be lurking just beyond our reach, then you need this collection.
Review
Huge thanks to ShortWave for the physical ARC. I love this cover!
This is a science fiction short story collection, and I loved that the stories varied in length from flash fiction to novelette. I also really enjoyed the mixture of sub genres this goes through, from dystopian to horror. There’s some really incredible concepts being played with here, and the distinction the author draws between loss, love, grief, and affection in such a short amount of words is a huge win.
The title novelette, Limelight, is the real highlight for me. Experimental treatments allow for those dearly departed to come back. Would you make that decision? Could you leave them alone if there were options to tweak things, enhance things? For the parents in this heart breaking story, they’re split right up the street. But when one wins out over the other, they may find they get more than they bargained for.
The idea of changing, or even enhancing someone that you loved and lost, is in my opinion, directly besmirching their memory. But if your intentions were pure, what then? Or, do you really believe that that could ever be pure? For me this hit notes of Black Mirror, Ex Machina and Sarah Chorn’s A Sorrow Named Joy. A dystopian world where something like this could exist, but never fully be accepted. As a high schooler, she is ridiculed and insulted for being brought back, for living. A choice that was never truly hers. To me that made this the most horror based story in the collection.
As her mother continues to grasp for more and more control over her, all in the name of giving her daughter the life she ‘deserves’, her father does his best to stay away, ashamed of what he’s allowed. The juxtaposition of the two’s feelings were really well done. The split between obsession story and self guilt really drove home the theme. Personally, right as this one ends, I’d love to see it open up into an entire novel, but I’m blown away with how well it worked as it stands.
From scifi stories that seem near future, to those that seem out of reach, the thing this collection drives home is that Croal knows exactly how to make believable, and heart wrenching short stories. Body enhancing/manipulating mixed with various angles of corporate greed, make this its own kind of new body horror that I frankly want nothing to do with!
Check out Ed’s review!
Wow, this sounds like such a powerful and emotionally charged story! The dynamics between the parents and the impact on their daughter must have been so compelling to read. I love how you highlighted the contrast between the mother’s obsession and the father’s guilt—it really makes me curious about how the story resolves. And I totally get wanting more; when a story is that good, you just don’t want it to end!