Light and Shadow: Eight Short Stories

by Linda Nagata

Light and Shadow collects eight stories by award-winning author Linda Nagata. Visit high-tech future battlefields, surreal other worlds, an orbital habitat, and a distant moon. Embrace action, and harrowing adventure. Half of these stories have appeared in various best-of-the-year anthologies, and each is introduced with brief notes from the author. Included Through Your Eyes (Asimov's 2013) Halfway Home (Nightmare Magazine 2013) Delphi (Lightspeed Magazine 2014) Attitude (Reach For Infinity 2014) A Moment Before It Struck (Lightspeed Magazine 2012) Light and Shadow (War Stories 2014) Nightside On Callisto (Lightspeed Magazine 2012) The Way Home (Operation Arcana 2015)

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Short Stories

158 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 28, 2016

About the author

I'm a writer from Hawaii best known for my high-tech science fiction, including the near-future thriller, The Last Good Man , and the far-future adventure series, INVERTED FRONTIER.

Though I don't review books on Goodreads, I do talk about some of my favorite books on my blog and those posts are echoed here. So I invite you to follow me for news of books and many other things. You can also visit my website to learn more about my work, and to sign up for my newsletter.

Reviews

[Zare · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting stories, some are non-standalone [in my opinion] tie-ins (the fantasy one with the chivalrous smoke demon) that might leave the reader a little bit confused because the story just drops you in the middle of things, some are tie-ins that can stand on their own (e.g. RED related stories) and some are pure standalone adventures (like excellent inter-dimensional fantasy/SF story and the horror story with the survivors of the airplane crash).

Good collection, but again that is to be expected from Linda Nagata.

Highly recommended.

[Kathy Piselli · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Nagata's novels in the Bohr universe and she had dropped out of sight for awhile, so I was glad to find her more recent work. This is a set of exciting stories annotated by the author, many in the Red universe. The stories are a bit more military, but still have the tech angle of her earlier work. And the tech is similar to what we have now, just a bit more advanced. “Through Your Eyes” is chillingly believable, though written in 2012. But my favorite was the horror story about a plane crash – a little different for this author.

[Julian White · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sampler of varied work, ranging from fantasy war to near-future warfare (and one which cleverly mixes the two) and includes one with a novel way of financing space exploration. Several stories fit into two (or possibly three) different novel series and in fact there's only one story which didn't quite work for me - somewhat too open-ended for my liking! Well worth a read and as an introduction to the author's work (going some way to addressing my recently realised lack of modern sf writing).

[Phillip · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read First Light: The Red when it was getting a lot of awards vibe, and thought it was brilliant but just never got around to reading book 2. Thought about it again the other day and was wondering if I would need to re-read book one, and found to my delight there was this story collection with a couple of stories in The Red Universe. Love it, loved the variety. I now know the not only will I re-read First Light before reading book 2, I will also be picking up the authors Fantasy works as well

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not a great fan of military SF and many of these stories are in this sub-genre but Linda Nagata is an excellent writer. These stories are never less than enjoyable and are sometimes excellent. Well worth a read.

[Mikael · Rating 4 out of 5]

That was fun. 8 short stories, some 20+ pages each; most of them connected to some of the worlds Nagata har created before, and it was very nice to get some alternate stories in those universes. All stories were good, with a few that were excellent.

[John Folk-Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here are eight short stories written by Linda Nagata, mostly in connection with her military sci-fi series, The Red. They are all tightly written, fast-paced and well-plotted. The highlight for me is the title story, Light and Shadow. It delves into the psychological and emotional impact of the skull cap technology, the device patrols of soldiers wear to stay linked to each other during combat. The cap connects electrodes to the brain and, in addition to keeping them all in communication, regulates the emotions of the wearers to keep them from extreme states, like panic or rage, that could affect their performance in battle. One soldier, convinced that the suppression of emotions has dangerously distorted her personality, decides to take her cap off during combat. The consequences highlight the psychological cost of technology in a powerful way that I haven't seen done so well since an Iain Banks story in The State of the Art.

[Terry Cox]

Ms. Nagata's range and storytelling prowess are remarkable. "Through Your Eyes," a prequel to her Red series of novels, is my favorite.