So another year has sped past and we are once more looking at another volume of Parsec's Triangulation series. Triangulation: Taking Flight, edited by Pete Butler, is an anthology of speculative fiction featuring stories by Reesa Brown, Amy Treadwell, Elizabeth Barrette, Katy Darby, Rachel Swirsky, Paul Stefko, Gail Sosinsky Wickman, Shanna Germain, Matthew Johnson, Jacob Edwards, Gerri Leen, David Seigler, Ian Creasey, Marc Vun Kannon, Matt Betts, Stephen V. Ramey, Lavie Tidhar, Shweta Narayan, and Eugie Foster.

This year the contributors were asked to submit stories, twenty in all, around the theme of flight and from the content of the stories the authors were given generous latitude in their interpretation. So the stories cover a myriad of genres and styles from Shanna Germain’s dark and disturbing auto-asphyxiation erotica - Seeing Stars - to the more whimsical stories of this year’s winner Amy Treadwell who has two entries - Guinea and Nine is Her Number - as she won both first and second prize this year.

Running to a slim one hundred and twenty-four pages means that a lot of the short stories are bite sized in length. Rachel Swirsky’s Into the Air runs to two pages, but even this is beaten by Shweta Narayan’s Dancing In Air, which covers only two thirds of one page but still makes for a well constructed piece. There are also stories which push the five thousand word limit as well.

To try and explain the genre and styles of the stories is a little futile as they contain few similarities other than the theme and the strength of the writing. My particular favourite out of the collection is The Life and Times of Penguin by Eugie Foster, which is about self-aware toys living under the regime of a destructive child.

Each of the stories is accompanied with a photo and a little piece about the author, although the book is a little on the slim side there should be something here for just about everybody.

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Charles Packer