Alice Unbound: Beyond Wonderland

by Colleen Anderson (Editor), David Day (Preface), Geoff Gander (Contributor)

Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) explored childlike wonder and the bewildering realm of adult rules and status, which clashed in bizarre ways. Many characters in his tales are anthropomorphic, whether talking cards, crying mock turtles or saucy Tiger Lilies. Wonderland: Alice Unbound is a collection of all-new speculative, fabulist, weird, myth, Sci-fi, fantasy, steampunk and horror stories set in our modern or slightly futuristic world. We might not truly want to live in the world of Alice or have to deal with mad queens and bandersnatches, but what if that Wonderland ceased to exist on a separate plane, and melded with our world? How would these characters fit in, and what would they bring or change? Are we ready to let the Jabberwock in the back door?

Genres: Anthologies

320 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 2018

About the author

Colleen Anderson writes fiction, dark fiction, erotica, poetry, SF, fantasy, and anything of interest. She has a BFA in Creative Writing and freelances as a copyeditor and proofreader. She is a Ladies of Horror Fiction, Canada Council, and BC Arts Council grant recipient, has been published in eight countries. An award-winning author, her works appear in Amazing, Cemetery Dance, Weird Tales, and HWA Poetry Showcase. A Rhysling Award winner for “Machine (r)Evolution” she is also a two-time winner of the SFPA’s dwarf poetry contest. Author of four poetry collections, I Dreamed a World, The Lore of Inscrutable Dreams, Weird Worlds and Vellum Leaves and Lettered Skins, she is working on two more collections. Her fiction collections, Embers Amongst the Fallen, A Body of Work are available online. She has served on the SFPA executive as well as British Fantasy Award and Stoker juries.

She is a member of the HWA and SFPA, and co-edited Tesseracts 17 with East Coast, dark fiction writer Steve Vernon, Playground of Lost Toys with Ontario, award-winning author Ursula Pflug, and edited Alice Unbound: Beyond Wonderland. She has published more than 500 pieces of fiction and poetry. www.colleenanderson.wordpress.com

Reviews

[Bogdan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not quite as expected, but there are some tematic stories that could spark interest out there.

After Costi Gurgu`s story I found another gem, Yellow Boy by James Wood, with a beautiful construction and a twisted end. Yeah, and Escargot really means Snail. Definitely twisted, twisted end! But, in a good way!

There were other nice stories, but for some reason, I didn`t felt so very much impressed.

Anyway, maybe this could be somewhere between 2.5 and 3.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of this was better than the second, but overall really a missed opportunity. Most of the stories take the Wonderland backdrop and put some kind of fantastical militarized conflict on top of it, and the ones that don't often fall short of doing anything interesting. Alice is often a placeholder name as opposed to a reworking of the character, and there are way too many stories about the Caucus.

BUT, the concept is cool, and there are a few stories worth reading (albeit forgettable).

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

The authors in this anthology definitely delivered when Colleen Anderson said to think outside the box. I am thrilled to be part of this book full of imaginative stories, some light, and some dark in tone. I enjoyed reading each story and seeing where the author took the theme.

[Doug Lewars · Rating 5 out of 5]

*** Possible Spoilers ***

I quite enjoyed this book. It's a collection of short stories based loosely on the theme of Alice in Wonderland; however, the objective given to the authors was to create the sense of insanity that is part and parcel of that book. I didn't find any story that was unpleasant. There were a few where I thought the authors were trying a bit too hard to create a sense of the surreal and allowed their plots to slip a bit but even those stories were still pretty good.

In addition to the stories were a couple of poems that since I generally don't care for poetry I read them but wasn't particularly impressed. The comprised just a few paged of the book and the rest was stories.

I particularly enjoyed the idea - take a concept, scene or character from one of the books and turn it into something different. Like most people I enjoyed the originals and I'm not sure what direction I'd take such a story in but it's something to think about after reading these selections. This is quite worth the time to read.

[Hillary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short story collections are always a bit of a tossup for whether I like them or not. Most of these I generally liked, though the first few I didn't, so it was a bit of a rough start. There wasn't anything cool enough that I wanted to seek out more of the author's work, though. Also, the cover art is super uncanny-valley creepy, and I couldn't figure out whether that was deliberate or not. I just kept it face down when I wasn't reading it. 

[Mark Charke · Rating 5 out of 5]

This anthology has one story of mine, about a pyromaniac shapeshifting wizard, a worshiper of change, who finds himself dragged into wonderland and must find the solution to surviving through the discipline of change. Insanity with a few ground rules is a fun realm for writing and this anthology is good for that.

[Barry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably really 3.5 stars. I found the book a bit up and down, which is not surprising. The good parts were quite good, the less good were tedious