Chronicle Worlds: No Way Home

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There is nothing upbeat about being exiled and never being able to return home. So, this is a generally downbeat collection of stories. The quality was generally good, although some ended a bit too abruptly.

To Sing of Chaos and Eternal Night - A Cyborg spends his life fighting and dying to protect humanity from an alien race, then he discovers he's been fighting on the wrong side. There was a lot of background stuff in this one that made it very convoluted.

“XE, or People Are Crazy.” Bradley is sent to evaluate an alien planet for human settlement. But is he alone in his exile?

“Grist.” Humanity has fallen on hard times; humans have been reduced to servitude. Is there any escape? Again, this one presupposed a lot of back-story and I'm not sure I cared about the characters.

“Merely a Madness.” Honeymooners caught in a revolution on Earth. Decent story.

“Revolver.” I guess every story collection has to be a masturbatory fantasy where a leftist writer spills his wet dream about conservates. This is that story.

“The Happy Place.” Pioneer life is hard on families. Life on recently-colonized Mars is very close to the edge. Decent story.

“Renata.” There's a lot of backstory and character conflict that's never explained in this one. It's an interesting story and interesting idea about precognition and time-travel, but there are things in the story that aren't explained and the story ends without resolution.

“Cold Witness.” This one was well written, but the interlacing of past and present and alternative lives made for a confusing stew.

“If You Are Reading This Post.” This is not really a story.