Galileo's Theme Park (Third Flatiron Anthologies Book 28)

I enjoyed this set of short stories enormously, and recommend it whether you like gentle, contemplative scifi or full-on space opera.One of the things I was most interested in, as I read it, was how the stories fitted together. What makes an editor select certain stories for their collection? A strong story, well-written, of course. But what is that special something that gets them selected from presumably hundreds of submissions?Several of the entries featured the Galilean planets and their satellites. Others went beyond the bounds of Galileo’s telescope, to the edges of black holes and other places. Some didn’t even leave Earth.The one that jumped into my mind later was something so wonderful, I wondered how a brain could come up with the idea. Galileo is abducted by his inquisitors, leaving his lowly assistant to clear up the mess…and he just has to take a peek down his master’s seeing-glass. What happens next is totally brilliant.The first two in the book are also memorable in that I needed only to read the first line of each to remember them. They are sad, or scary, or… well, they are what you make of them. In concept they are each very different, but both have a great deal to say about the human condition and the future of space flight.The one set in the Wild West is delightful, and the one consisting of the messages from the space ship stranded on a planet where it rains clowns, is bizarre, funny, and strangely sad. There are a few that have odd encounters with aliens, and some that have odd encounters with God, or not-God. Some are dystopian, some uplifting.What they have in common is a strange difference, a twist, a thought about what the future might bring (or the past might have brought without us seeing). Overall, Galileo’s Theme Park is a first-class production, worthy of re-reading.

Third Flatiron Anthologies is a pretty reliable series for smooth, touch-of-wonder stories, without the heavy political messages that sometimes turn up in SFF works. These offerings follow that standard, including everything from the quirky to the serious. Because Galileo is the theme this time around, the volume includes stories including space exploration, adventure, religion, and cosmology.The anthology starts off strong with Alex Zaiben’s “And Yet They Move,” where a star surveyor finds herself lost in an ancient model. Ginger Strivelli’s gives us a memorable turn of phrase when she describes quantum physics as “a brick wall of sciency stuff” in “For the Love of Money,” a tongue-in-cheek look at colonization. “Vincenzo, the Starry Messenger” takes us to Florence in 1633, when Vincenzo, Galileo’s assistant, has a otherworldly experience with the telescope his master called the “starry messenger.” In “Signals” by Erica Ruppert, a woman is haunted by elusive music. Justin Short gives us a surreal and horrific image of a family marooned on a distant world in “Dispatches from the Eye of the Clown.” “And the Universe Waited” by Jo Miles is a heart-warming vision of mentorship and waiting.These are all enjoyable reads.

I was given a free copy for an honest review. The short stories in this anthology are well written, well edited, and highly entertaining. I always find myself surprised at the end of all the Third Flatiron shorts, and this anthology is no exception. Between laughing out loud and pulling my heart strings, you won’t be disappointed by this purchase! In fact, you’ll want to read them all!