Splashdown Authors Write Short Stories For Anthology -- Review of "Aquasynthesis" edited by Grace Bridges

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Reviewer: Forrest Schultz schultz_forrest@yahoo.com 770-583-3258

Blog Address: http://newsciencefictionandfantasyreviews.blogspot.com

November 29, 2012

SPLASHDOWN AUTHORS WRITE SHORT STORIES FOR ANTHOLOGY

A Review of

Grace Bridges, Editor Aquasynthesis (Splashdown Books, 2011)

196 pp $5.98 ISBN: 978-1-927154-00-7

Reviewer: Forrest W. Schultz

Both the quantity and quality of speculative fiction writing by Christian authors continues to rise. One of the notable contributors to this phenomenon hails from New Zealand: Grace Bridges, who is the Owner of the Lost Genre Guild email discussion group (founded by Frank Creed) and the Owner and Founder of Splashdown Books Publishing Co. In the "Aquasynthesis" anthology Bridges gives us an opportunity to sample some of this fiction from Splashdown authors. One of these authors, Walt Staples, is the Narrator, and eleven other authors contribute short stories. These are among the best Christian writers of speculative fiction today.

There is a great variety among these stories, as is usually the case with anthologies. My favorites were the two into which an authoritative personage suddenly appears to convey unexpected and important information: in one case this person is God; in the other case the person is the real Saint Nicholas.

Now a word about the meaning of "splashdown" and "aquasynthesis". The kind of splashdown to which Bridges refers is not like that of the returning astronaut's space capsule, but rather is like that of the splash of the diver as he jumps off of the research ship and plunges into the ocean depths to study its strange denizens. And the aquasynthesis is analogous to the compilation of the results of these studies into the science of marine biology. The fictional worlds built by the anthology authors are the mileus into which the reader is plunged. the narrator is the tour guide for these newly created regions of The Mythosphere.

This anthology provides a good introduction to these authors. Information is available at http://www.splashdownbooks.com/.