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Titanic Terastructures
Ringworlds, Dyson spheres, arcologies, planet cities, space elevators, skyscrapers with populations of entire countries; come along with us as we explore megastructures, gigastructures, TERASTRUCTURES!
489 pages, Paperback
Published November 12, 2021
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About the author
Jessica Augustsson
38 books26 followersJessica Augustsson is the editor-in-chief of JayHenge Publishing. She is a grammar nerd, eclipse chaser, part-time writer, and a bit of a geek. As the editor of spec-fic anthologies, most of her writing can be found nestled among the words of other authors, but she can’t help typing out a few of her own stories now and then. As for speculative fiction in her own life, she was voted by her Idaho high school class to be the most likely to go live on the moon; when she was 20, she moved to Sweden so she guesses that’s pretty close.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 16, 2022
This is a great theme for an anthology - collecting stories relating to one of SF's oldest and fondest tropes - the Big Dumb Object. From space elevators to arcologies to planet-sized cities to Dyson swarms; if it's a giant megastructure, chances are it's featured in a story in this book.
I only heard about it because a friend has a story here but I liked the concept enough that it immediately went on my wishlist. One birthday later and it's sitting on my shelf. There's a great breadth within the twenty six stories here, and the best of them contrast the size of the structure with the small scale of the characters.
The first story, Honeysuckle for Ashes features a witch, complete with Wizard of Oz style flying house, who lives around a ringworld and the child who stows away when the witch comes to help her mother through a difficult pregnancy. It's a nice story, but could really be set anywhere, with the ringworld being more backdrop than an important part of the story. Better, in that regard, is You Too Shall Pass, a fable about hope in the face of endless toil and loss, as blue-collar workers strive to build a bridge to a New Earth and what they have to give up along the way.
Highlights for me included The What-The Tree about an interruption to a cold-sleep journey to another star system; Haunting House about a house that's haunting a shipyard, which I loved for its evocative worldbuilding and clever mystery; and And the House Did Watch Over All about a planet-wide House that's slowly dying but still has an awareness that tries to help its inhabitants.
There's more than a few pretty dark stories in the mix, but those too shall pass, and you'll find yourself reading about living starships, senile giant houses or outsized spacebourne life. A mixed collection, but with the good definitely outweighing the bad for me.
I only heard about it because a friend has a story here but I liked the concept enough that it immediately went on my wishlist. One birthday later and it's sitting on my shelf. There's a great breadth within the twenty six stories here, and the best of them contrast the size of the structure with the small scale of the characters.
The first story, Honeysuckle for Ashes features a witch, complete with Wizard of Oz style flying house, who lives around a ringworld and the child who stows away when the witch comes to help her mother through a difficult pregnancy. It's a nice story, but could really be set anywhere, with the ringworld being more backdrop than an important part of the story. Better, in that regard, is You Too Shall Pass, a fable about hope in the face of endless toil and loss, as blue-collar workers strive to build a bridge to a New Earth and what they have to give up along the way.
Highlights for me included The What-The Tree about an interruption to a cold-sleep journey to another star system; Haunting House about a house that's haunting a shipyard, which I loved for its evocative worldbuilding and clever mystery; and And the House Did Watch Over All about a planet-wide House that's slowly dying but still has an awareness that tries to help its inhabitants.
There's more than a few pretty dark stories in the mix, but those too shall pass, and you'll find yourself reading about living starships, senile giant houses or outsized spacebourne life. A mixed collection, but with the good definitely outweighing the bad for me.
Displaying 1 of 1 review