The Baen Free Library is a section of the Baen site where a good number of books is offered for free download, as a way to sample authors and their works. During one of my visits, I discovered the existence of a series of short stories collections, grouped by year of publication: as it often happens, anthologies can be mixed bags, but I found a few stories that truly caught my attention: in my next posts dedicated to shorter works I will review the ones that I liked most.
BAEN 2016 FREE STORIES
ADRIFT was the very first story in the anthology, and a very promising beginning at that: set during the construction of a space station in Earth orbit it showcases the hard life of the techs actually building the structure and the support people taking care of them during the work shift. Dan “Cole” Colton is a three-tour veteran, despite his young age, and when we meet him he’s scolding one of the recruits because he’s still unable to think about the differences in motion, mass and momentum one finds in space, as opposed to the gravity well.
The incident over, Cole moves aside to refuel his power pack, and that’s when tragedy strikes: an impact sends him careening away from the station, damages his suit’s instruments and leaving him briefly unconscious. Once he comes to again, he realizes he’s quite far away from any form of rescue, and tries to prepare for the inevitable end, not knowing that his co-workers and the station’s personnel are working frantically to retrieve him – alive and well, if possible.
What follows is both a tale of survival in the most hostile environment man even faced, and a study of humanity in extreme conditions: what I liked most was the strong sense of community that grows among people living and working so far from the only home humanity ever knew, and the way everyone is giving their all to bring Cole back. The figure that stands out the most is that of Shay, one of the operatives in Command and Control: she’s new and feel quite unsure of herself in this new surroundings, but the emergency seems to unlock as-yet-untapped resources that make her pivotal to the operation.
And then there are the descriptions of space, and Earth, that color this story with a few beautiful touches of… almost poetry, for want of a better description, and that contribute to make this short tale a very satisfying read.
My Rating: 
Space and Sorcery 
Interesting – I’ll have to check out that link although I might wait for more of your reviews.
Lynn 😀
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Just follow the trail of breadcrumbs… 😀
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I read the 2011 edition and enjoyed it quite a bit. Mainly because it had a Larry Correia story in it 😀
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On the same site I found a collection of dystopian stories that I’m reading between books, and so far I’ve encountered some good finds 🙂
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I’m not reading much Baen these days, but I love their business model. I remember that when I bought my first Honor Harrington hardcover, I got cd with free ebooks of all the previous instalments 🙂 Wonderful! And I slowly completed entire series in dead-tree versions anyway.
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The Honor Harrington series was my Baen “entry level” and I agree: their business model is an interesting one – I’ve sampled several authors I like thanks to their free library.
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Wow, hard to believe so much can take place in such a limited number of pages – on paper the survival premise sounds like one that would call for a full length novel, but I guess this shows some authors can pull it off in a short format 😀
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It’s not an easy feat, granted, but in this case the writer was quite successful: reading short stories often requires wading through many so-and-so tales, but when you strike gold it’s very satisfying 🙂
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