Reading an Anthology I Thought About Writing For
FTL, Y'all!: Tales From the Age of the $200 Warp Drive by C. Spike Trotman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I originally discovered this when it was still in the planning stages, via a now-vanished blog for writers. I was astonished at how mundane the commenters' ideas were. Either ideas for improving terrestrial transportation, or focusing on the obstacles instead of the possibilities. I immediately wanted to write about going out and having Adventures in the style of the old pulps, except in the greater galaxy instead of the Old Solar System that's no longer really plausible.
And then I discovered it was for comics, not prose -- and while I do have some background in art, I wasn't really strong enough in comics to script and draw my own comic. So I moved on to other projects, and pretty much forgot about it -- until I discovered the finished volume at my local library.
It's interesting to see a mix of light and dark, the grim and the hopeful. Stories of people who clearly don't have that righteous Right Stuff to be astronauts heading out to the black and meeting horrible ends, and stories of making connections on distant planets with people very different from us in outward form, like the young man who takes a worm prince back home so he can prevent a wicked relative from becoming king of the worm people.
On the whole, it's a fascinating exploration of the idea of easy but non-obvious FTL in a different medium from its predecessors (Harry Turtledove's "The Road Not Taken" and Jerry Oltion's "The Getaway Special").
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