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INFINITY AND I: Seventy Science Fiction Short Stories
INFINITY AND I is a collection of seventy brand new science fiction stories from Sam M. Phillips, the co-founder of Zombie Pirate Publishing. Inside you’ll find surreal space journeys, bizarre aliens, futuristic technology, rogue AIs, and a girl who just wants to be loved. Follow a huge array of exotic characters across the galaxy as they use inter-dimensional drugs and fight battles on faraway worlds. Action, drama, and science combine with the complexity of the human soul in the year’s most exciting new sci fi release.Open up a portal and step into the depths of a unique mind with INFINITY AND Seventy Science Fiction Stories!
326 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 1, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 3, 2022
Great SciFi Short Story Collection
Looking at the fantastic cover for this collection of flash & short stories written by Sam Phillips, i knew I'd be in for a treat reading scifi, which I love. What I didn't know was I would be whisked off to apocalyptic and possible future Earth worlds, all resulting in great scifi stories. Crack this book open and you quickly discover you've opened a treasure trove of interesting subjects that will keep you up past your bedtime.
A shiftless man finds himself on a journey of death and a surprise place of honor. In another, a young princess finds the courage to refuse to be a pawn in her kingdom with a shocking, "No". And a sad trade off of those you love keeps you at the top. There are laser weapons, holographic projections and bots of varying purposes. This collection is packed with a wide variety of scifi for every taste. The author writes experiences and knowledge he holds and invites his readers to see worlds we have not known before. I highly recommend this collection for anyone who loves scifi or would like to get their feet wet reading a new and facanating genre. The fact it is a short story collection makes it great for that purpose, too.
Looking at the fantastic cover for this collection of flash & short stories written by Sam Phillips, i knew I'd be in for a treat reading scifi, which I love. What I didn't know was I would be whisked off to apocalyptic and possible future Earth worlds, all resulting in great scifi stories. Crack this book open and you quickly discover you've opened a treasure trove of interesting subjects that will keep you up past your bedtime.
A shiftless man finds himself on a journey of death and a surprise place of honor. In another, a young princess finds the courage to refuse to be a pawn in her kingdom with a shocking, "No". And a sad trade off of those you love keeps you at the top. There are laser weapons, holographic projections and bots of varying purposes. This collection is packed with a wide variety of scifi for every taste. The author writes experiences and knowledge he holds and invites his readers to see worlds we have not known before. I highly recommend this collection for anyone who loves scifi or would like to get their feet wet reading a new and facanating genre. The fact it is a short story collection makes it great for that purpose, too.
April 3, 2022
Short stories anthologies don’t usually live up to my hopes. But this one did. Perhaps because these are from our modern world, all written in the last handful of years.
February 19, 2021
Although I'm not a big sci-fi fan, I enjoyed this book very much because Sam Phillips is such a talented writer. This book is masterfully composed and meticulously edited, which makes it a pleasure to read. Watch out for this young author. Something's telling me he's got a bright future ahead of him!
August 26, 2020
Phillips’ jam-packed collection Infinity and I is a delightful roller-coaster ride of well-crafted tales fleshed out with smart pacing and fantastic writing. In “Life Laser,” an unnamed narrator injects “nanobots” into his bloodstream as a vehicle for escape akin to our world’s addictive panaceas of alcohol, drugs, sex, or even social media. After using up his stash, he must set out to score more, and the story’s world unfolds into a place of New Jack City crack addicts cooking under a Blade Runner heat lamp. Like any junkie, the main character has both moments of clarity, where he longs to kick the habit for good, and moments where he skirts death and must be brought back to life by medical means. The real twist lies is discovering which path he selects and why.
“Sacred Tongue” could be read as straight fiction or complex allegory. Kirra “didn’t look reptilian, not like her mother, but she knew she carried the genes—the potential—and that was all that mattered.” When she is faced with an onerous initiation ritual, Kirra must make a courageous choice in a finale that holds its own with stories featured in classic Twilight Zone episodes. My absolute favorite of Phillips’ line-up, however, is “Neptune,” a scintillating Alice in Wonderland plotline where characters drop ominously bizarre hints of wisdom like “It’s eat or be eaten.” After the narrator peeks into a portal opened by a very special wafer, he attempts to maneuver his strange environment, and the sunshine acid rocket ride takes off, continuing to tickle the reader’s perception long after the story is concluded.
Phillips’ writing is simply mesmeric: melodic without collapsing into trite idioms or purple prose. Descriptions like “It settles into a comforting valley where I drift, my body lurching up, outside of my control, a puppet tied to the will of its master,” and “I let the gravitational platform skim me up like the catch of the day, packed in like sardines with so many others” ooze naturally from the text, building upon instead of distracting from the setting. His imagery is sharp and effective, luring the reader into his fanciful worlds without appearing forced or showy. The Co-Vid pandemic had grounded most of us, and Infinity and I offers an array of mental vacations in which a reader can happily escape.
“Sacred Tongue” could be read as straight fiction or complex allegory. Kirra “didn’t look reptilian, not like her mother, but she knew she carried the genes—the potential—and that was all that mattered.” When she is faced with an onerous initiation ritual, Kirra must make a courageous choice in a finale that holds its own with stories featured in classic Twilight Zone episodes. My absolute favorite of Phillips’ line-up, however, is “Neptune,” a scintillating Alice in Wonderland plotline where characters drop ominously bizarre hints of wisdom like “It’s eat or be eaten.” After the narrator peeks into a portal opened by a very special wafer, he attempts to maneuver his strange environment, and the sunshine acid rocket ride takes off, continuing to tickle the reader’s perception long after the story is concluded.
Phillips’ writing is simply mesmeric: melodic without collapsing into trite idioms or purple prose. Descriptions like “It settles into a comforting valley where I drift, my body lurching up, outside of my control, a puppet tied to the will of its master,” and “I let the gravitational platform skim me up like the catch of the day, packed in like sardines with so many others” ooze naturally from the text, building upon instead of distracting from the setting. His imagery is sharp and effective, luring the reader into his fanciful worlds without appearing forced or showy. The Co-Vid pandemic had grounded most of us, and Infinity and I offers an array of mental vacations in which a reader can happily escape.
March 15, 2021
Reading Infinity and I by Sam M. Phillips, published by Zombie Pirate Publishing, is to visit a small galaxy filled with surrealistic shards of futuristic horror and inchoate dread. These seventy stories, some only a page long, none more than a dozen, explore some of the hopes and fears that we have for our future. They ask questions about what it is to be human, and for some, simply what it is to be. They toy with the concepts of the levels of reality that we experience.
They are stories born of our dreams and nightmares in a largely cyber-punk space that refuses to sit still. I read the book in one sitting while travelling, the final descent of my plane marking a traversing back into a single reality filled with the normal dimensions that we experience and are accustomed to.
This is not your normal book. It is not really horror, not fully speculative fiction, definitely not fantasy, and not all cyber-punk, but an exploration of planes of reality that even Jean Baudrillard would have difficulty in pinning down. It is a strong semiotic brew that I well recommend, but definitely not as bedtime reading.
They are stories born of our dreams and nightmares in a largely cyber-punk space that refuses to sit still. I read the book in one sitting while travelling, the final descent of my plane marking a traversing back into a single reality filled with the normal dimensions that we experience and are accustomed to.
This is not your normal book. It is not really horror, not fully speculative fiction, definitely not fantasy, and not all cyber-punk, but an exploration of planes of reality that even Jean Baudrillard would have difficulty in pinning down. It is a strong semiotic brew that I well recommend, but definitely not as bedtime reading.
September 2, 2020
What a great read! This book is a rich source of content for scifi enthusiasts but also for anyone who enjoys really good short stories. There's 70 truly unique stories that take short dives into the lives of many interesting characters and places. The reoccurance of certain technologies and themes gives the impression that they are set on different planets in far flung regions across the same galaxy. This, along with the authors poetic writing style, gives the overall book a comforting continuity which makes it easy to stay immersed and engaged in the universe. I suggest reading them in the order published as the pacing is well thought out but some of my favourite stories were; Neptune, Icarus Cube, the Investors and The Swirl.
March 27, 2021
Every story is unique. Although basically Sci fi , there is some fantasy, philosophy and humour concepts thrown in. Seventy great stoies A good book to have when you only have time for short reads. Each new story will potentially become your favourite. My favourite is the signature story 'Infinity and I'.
April 17, 2022
Science fiction is something more than some supposedly futuristic context for the stories and some random techie-sounding words without any substance behind them. In my honest opinion, it is much more than that and I could not find it here.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews