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by Rowan Hill (Author)
"How many words are there for 'dark'? Not nearly enough when it comes to Hill's clever collection of sci-fi horror that's dripping in cosmic dread. You may think twice before looking up at the stars." - Robert P. Ottone, author of The Vile Thing We Created and the Bram Stoker Award-winning novel The Triangle
Wind chitters the trees, specter children laugh in the boughs and centuries later a similar wind races down the slopes Olympus Mons, barreling over the terraformed Martian horizons littered with corpses.
A collection of terrestrial to interstellar sci-fi horror traveling from pregnant, haunted lands of the dust bowl up to Mars' basecamps where first contact does not go as planned, these nine stories span centuries, planets, and the space between with women as both victims and villains of circumstance. As humans progress off planet, a singular villain appears, a thread for keen observers to witness one long invasion. It has many forms, but ends with one message that Earth is special, and women more so.
Stories set in a shared universe: in "Fruit of Womb" a family moves onto a farm that is heaven on earth, never knowing the price until they want to leave. "A Better Chimera for the Toxic Workplace" witnesses future Earth, burning to the point where people rely on genetic mutation to survive and women still deal with toxic workplaces and sexual harassment. Jumping ahead in space and time, "Spaceport Marte" sits in a high Mars orbit, where a mechanic becomes infected with an alien parasite that pushes her at the seams.
With five never-before-published stories, this collection leads readers to discover that, ultimately, there are No Fair Maidens from Earth to Mars.
