Teaser

Space. the final frontier. Out here in the black beyond, nobody can hear you scream. Nobody cares if you live or die. And the worst darkness might be what humans bring with them . . .

Review

Among the various reading challenges I have unofficially set for myself are to read more short fiction, and to read more from small presses. the latter can be easily remedied by buying small press publications at conventions, which is why I’m likely to be found lurking around a lot of conventions next year. Short fiction, however, is a different matter.

Broadly speaking, anthologies come in two varieties. First are the highlights, which gather existing short fiction and put it in a single volume. Anything labelled ‘Year’s Best’ probably falls into this category. The other type is a commissioned anthology, where all of the stories have been written specifically for the book in question. As a general rule of thumb, commissioned anthologies tend to be gathered around some kind of theme, or share a subgenre.

If you want to read older short stories, your options are essentially limitless. There are hundreds of anthologies out there. If you want to read new stories, commissioned anthologies are the best way to go. Especially if, like me, online magazines are out of the question due to eyesight issues. the problem is that big publishers tend to be risk averse, and common wisdom is that anthologies don’t sell. This is where small presses come in. Most of my favourite anthologies come from small presses, notably NewCon Press in the UK, but now The Slab Press can join the shelves proudly, because Obsidian is quite possibly my favourite science fiction anthology. Ever.

Anthologies being what they are, and not knowing any of the authors involved, I expected the usual hits and misses. I got six hits. Six brilliant pieces of short fiction. Technically, the stories here are novelettes rather than short stories, with a longer novella to close the collection. These word-count based distinctions are primarily of interest to award categories, and I’m happy to label everything here short fiction. Small in page count, but massive in ideas.

The overarching theme here is darkness. There’s a hard SF edge to several of the stories, but they all walk the line into horror territory at some point. There are ghost ships, mysterious infections, and a space station where sleep paralysis demons walk the corridors at night. I won’t dive too deeply into any one story, because horror is best experienced blind, but if you like your science fiction with a darker edge, then this is an anthology you won’t want to miss out on.

Quite often, anthologies rely on a big name to draw readers in. For example, I read Infinite Stars (edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt) because it had a Jack Campbell story in it, and also because space opera and military SF are two of my favourite subgenres. Obsidian has no great pull author. It has six authors who I would expect are largely unknown to the general SF reader. And that’s a great thing. As well as nursing new talent from a business perspective, it also makes sure the reader approaches the stories on their own terms. It lets the stories speak for themselves. And when they speak, it’s in a harsh whisper that you can’t help but be pulled in by. If any of these authors were to appear on a bookshelf near me, I know I’d grab that book for a closer look.

Obsidian is, in a word, fantastic. It’s given me six authors, one editor, and one publisher to keep an eye out for next time I’m walking around the dealers’ room of a convention. And if there’s any justice in the world, I’ll be finding them in bookshops too.

Book Stats

• Contains five novelettes and one novella
• Published in 2026 by The Slab Press
• 283 Pages