Thursday, June 14, 2018

Holding On By Our Fingertips, edited by Kate Coe and Amanda Rutter

Release date: May 31, 2018
Subgenre: Apocalyptic anthology 

About Holding On By Our Fingertips:

 

Holding On By Our Fingertips

An anthology of science fiction and speculative stories exploring the many different reactions and experiences of people during the 24 hours leading up to the end of the world. Our base instinct is to survive, but when the end is nigh, do we simply lie down and die? Or do we celebrate our life and achievements?
Love, loss, forgiveness, revenge, or just that final goodbye…

Gaie Sebold -- James Everington -- Sarah Higbee -- Charlotte Bond -- Kim Lakin-Smith -- Steve Carr -- Leontii Cristea -- Charlotte Strong -- Tabitha Lord -- Theo Graham -- Adrian Faulkner -- Phil Sloman -- C.A. Yates -- Ren Warom -- Terry Grimwood -- Scott Hungerford -- Courtney Privett

 

Excerpt:

 

Heatstroke Harry by James Everington


People called him Heatstroke Harry, although whatever malady affected his head was obviously more permanent than heatstroke. But then, Harry was homeless, his only shelter from the heat his ragged clothes or a cardboard box. Maybe anyone would end up like Harry, if theyd had to live out in the shimmer and blaze of the streets all the time.
Sure,one of us would sayme or Clarkie or Deepak (never the woman). But first a story, Harry. Tell us what you can see up there today.A face, a devil, a flame-breathing dragonyou never knew, with Harry.
Harry would pause as if this time he wasnt going to demean himself, but then sigh, his stiff clothes rustling and crackling like cinders. Hed look up with that cracked and parched face to the sky that had afflicted him so.
The worlds ending,hed say, every time. Today.
Harry looked to the sky: his shtick, the personal touch he brought to his beggary and madness was that he claimed to be able to see the pollutants up there, see all the invisible crap the sky was bursting with. See the patterns it made, like tealeaves, and in those swirling patterns Harry claimed to be able to see the future.
It was never good news.
Wed laugh, loud and brash, at this words. A cigarette held out just out of reach. What, again, Harry? How is the world ending this time?
He was nothing if not predictable, Harry.
Its the time of false hope, he might say. In a few hours time it will all be over. All of this, gone. All of you, dead. A meteor…”
A meteor throwing up ash and blocking out the sun? You did this one last week, Harry!We constantly interrupted him, when he ended the world, as if trying to exert control over what he was saying, despite its obvious nonsense.
No, not ash. Its only a small meteor, relatively speaking. It will kill a few thousand in Tianjin, thats all; its not big enough to cause much damage. But even though we know that, theres a prototype AI in China which wont. And it controls all their nukes…”
I didnt realise it at the time, but every apocalypse Harry constructed fell from the sky. Meteorites, nukes, space plagues, gamma raysAs if when he looked to the sky he really could see the damage wed done to it and was envisaging its revenge. Each time, Id try to gaze into that pitiless blue as long as Harry could, but after a few seconds Id have to look away, eyes too dry for tears.
Harry kept looking.
The failsafes dont trigger and the AI will interpret it as an attack from America and fire back before anyone can switch it off…”
And the world would be over in an instant. Boom, again.

 

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About Kate Coe:


Kate Coe is an editor, book reviewer and writer of fiction & fantasy. She writes the sparkpunk GreenSky series and blogs at writingandcoe.co.uk. In real life she's a typesetter and fills her spare time in between writing with web design, gaming, geeky cross-stitch and DIY (which may or may not involve destroying things). She also reads far fewer books that she would like to, but possibly more than she really has time for.

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Google+

 

 

About Amanda Rutter:

 

Amanda Rutter was previously trained and worked for over a decade as an accountant. She eventually became an editor with Angry Robot and helped authors to their Strange Chemistry imprint. Since then, she has become a freelance editor through her company AR Editorial Solutions, Wise Ink, and BubbleCow. She also writes for the Tor.com blog when she has time.

 

 

 

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