The Long Fall Up: And Other Stories by William Ledbetter

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

Super compelling, hard sci-fi short story collection that deserves all the hype.

Read this if you love The Expanse
Read this if you love Station Eleven
Read this if you love hard sci-fi, soft world building and flawed but ultimately relatable characters

This short story collection opens with the titular, Nebula Award winning short story, 'The Long Fall Up'. It's clear why this short story won the Nebula award, as it immediately drops you in a spaceship, chasing another ship on behalf of a planetary superpower. Although the story is set far in the future, it feels extremely relevant as it questions reproductive autonomy, and the ethicacy of laws meant to protect. As a mother, this story hit hard.

All of these stories are really different and yet every single one plays out like a high-quality HBO series. We have space travel, we have dystopian worlds, we have space cowboys, we have aliens and so much more. Sometimes these stories are wrapped up with satisfying endings, and sometimes we're left wondering what happened next. I love the variation here.

One of my favourite stories in the collection is called, "Last House, Lost House" about one of the last people on Earth in the midst of a cataclysmic weather event. She has been alone, scavenging for so long that she's wondering if she can even continue anymore. The questions around what makes life worth living are powerfully investigated.

Another favourite is, "How to Fix Discarded Things". In this world, everyone has a printer than can print them anything from clothes to dishes to toys, and it meant to be a universal equalizer ensuring everyone has food, housing and access to essentials like clothes. However, the printer usage is highly regulated, the people without power and money are still subjugated, and where does the value of handmade items go?

Thank you to NetGalley and Interstellar Flight Press for the advanced reader copy.

This book is best read in a bar on a satellite orbiting a planet far from Earth. Don’t let yourself get distracted by the people telling stories of retrieving ancient space junk, or the last dystopian months of what used to be called Earth.