Gargantua

by Robert Bagnall, Gabrielle Bleu, Brandon Case

Shellworlds, Alderson Disks, Dyson Spheres, O'neill Cylinders, Matrioshka Brains, Wormhole Networks - Stories of massive engineering megastructures that reshape stellar systems.

This book features the stories:

"Terminal by Robert Bagnall
"The End of Night on Second-Day" by Gabrielle Bleu
"Interstellar Chess Between Scions of the Matryoshki" by Brandon Case
"The Nebula" by Benjamin Chandler
"Amiana's Friends" by Rimi B. Chatterjee
"A Study of Mycelium and Mutualistic Symbiosis" by Monique Ford
"Shadow of the Artifice" by Andrew Hansen
"Betwixt Canopy and Caverns" by Henry Herz
"Counting Backwards" by Liam Hogan
"Rosie's Ring" by Melody E. McIntyre
"As the Tube Stops Spinning" by Claire McNerney
"All Our History Begins at the End" by Marisca Pichette
"A Solar Voyage" by Jasper Polane
"They Named Me Hope" by Camden Rose
"Thirty-Nine Statistically Improbable Signs of an Apocalypse Found in
the Networks of Reef Six" by Benjamin Rosenbaum
"Museum" by Jessica Sarlin
"The Temple at the Beginning of Heaven and Earth" by C.R. Serajeddini
"The Long Road" by M. Shedric Simpson
"Green" by A.D. Sui
"A Requiem for Merrifex" by R.L. Summerling
"As the World Turns" by Michael Teasdale
"A Future Carved from Flesh" by Rebecca E. Treasure
"Heaven Lies Underfoot, and All the Devils Above" by Sagan Yee
"Sentencing" by Lucy Zhang

114 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2023

Reviews

[John R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just loved the irony of something so small, full of stories so short, being titled: Gargantua. Most of the stories, well all of them really, are “good.” I just didn’t really vibe with most of them. I guess the joke was on me in that the title, and the theme, of the book is one thing while almost all of the stories feel… pretty small.

That’s not a bad thing, I guess I was just thinking it would be something else. A few, like M. Shedric Simpson’s “The Long Road”, Rimi B. Chatterjee’s “Ariana’s Friends”, and C.R. Serajeddini’s “The Temple at the Beginning of Heaven and Earth” really stood out. And I guess the closest that I kind of wanted or hoped for — or would probably have written myself — was Robert Bagnall’s “Terminal.”

The book is created by a local, Pittsburgh, boutique publisher called Air & Nothingness Press. The object is beautifully put together and designed.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

A refreshing creative collection of short stories about large things.

Overall, the anthology summons cosmic thoughts and evokes technofuturistic meanders.

The volume balances optimistic and pessimistic, with a common denominator of rich imagination.

This is also a great way to present 1,000-word stories because as an ensemble they pack a punch that they might lack standing alone.

I found a few authors' stories to be worth individual praise.

Presented in the order they appear:

Sagan Lee's "Heaven Lies Underfoot, and All the Devils Above" reads as a tidy parable meditating on the ethics of inequality and the role of storyteller and reader.

Brandon Case's "Interstellar Chess Between Scions of the Matryoski" presents a dramatic game of love, spacetime, and sacrifice.

Camden Rose's "They Named Me Hope" tweaks human heartstrings portraying the dedicated integrity of an unmanned space probe whose mission outlives its creators.

Michael Teasdale's "As the World Turns" riffs romantic about the cycles of cold war and warm peace that characterize generations of nations occupying opposite sides of a rotating cylinder.

Rimi B. Chatterjee's "Amiana's Friends" takes a dive into the peri-human consciousness of evolved team of beings performing generational sacrifice to terraform Venus.

A.D. Sui's "Green" plays at the same paradox about observing extraterrestrial intelligence that animates Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem.

Benjamin Chandler's "The Nebula" explores the psychology of obsession as an astronomer fixates on her special corner of the universe never understanding the full nature of its beauty.

I enjoyed reading Gargantua.

As I note about the other Air & Nothingness Press creative works I have explored, it is a well-edited, well-crafted artifact of a book and provides a lovely platform for talented writers whose voices add richness to our reading universe.

[Dale Lehman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gargantua is, possibly ironically, a small book, but its mere 114 pages are filled with big ideas. Twenty-four short stories, each about four pages long, carry the reader into distant futures--some incredibly distant. If there is a theme uniting them, it is big engineering projects: vast rings and Dyson spheres, often people by humans struggling to extend their species life beyond that of Earth and even its sun.

The book is physically beautiful, with gorgeous cover art both inside and out, flaps that fold out revealing the interior art, and--get this--a hand-lettered copy number. I have number 81 of 200. It feels like you're holding something special.

The writing is superb and the stories imaginative. I only dinged it one star because, honestly, some of those stories just weren't my cup of tea. I'm not one for dark stories that can't offer even a glimmer of light. But that's personal.

I also felt a number of these stories handled religion in a pretty facile way. I get that we're living in an era when people don't really understand religion, but I'm pretty tired of the supposition that people invent religions to either explain what they can't otherwise explain or to cope when the going gets tough.

But again, that's personal. Otherwise,this is a lovely collection of quick reads that will be of interest to science fiction readers, or anyone who just likes to imagine.

[Patty · Rating 3 out of 5]

A small book about big places. it’s a fun concept for a collection of short stories around the theme of massive megastructures. Like any collection of stories by multiple authors, I enjoyed some much more than others. Nothing terrible, several very good.

[Camden Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read one story a day, and really enjoyed the book a lot! Plus, I’m in it, so there’s that, too.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Biased because my story is in it! But it's a solid variety of short sff stories and the binding/size/printing is so nice