I owe Mike McPhail an apology; I’ve had a review copy of his anthology, Breach the Hull for just about a month and a half. I finished the book quickly, but I’ve had a hard time framing a meaningful review around a collection of short stories.
Let me say first of all that the book is worth the purchase. It is available on Amazon.com in trade paperback size. The stories are (for the most part) well written with a variety of unique ideas and perspectives. They range from space opera to near future character studies. Many of them have a unique “twist” to them that seems to be the hallmark of short speculative fiction.
Perhaps the strongest stories in the anthology are “Peter Power Armor” by John C. Wright and “Dead End” by John Hemry (Jack Campbell). Both are easily devoured in one sitting, and each of them provide that oddly disturbed feeling that you get from a well-crafted work of twisty prose.
Wright’s story is almost post-apocalyptic. In his future world, the rules of war were blurred in the face of smart weaponry and replaced with terror tactics. The end result was the collapse of society and an institutional fear of technology. A survivor from this era who now serves as a tutor to a young girl helps her discover a cache of forbidden technology. The result is gut-punchingly satisfying.
Hemry’s short isn’t as tightly written as his Lost Fleet series, but his idea of humans engaged in a genocidal war with an alien race leads to an interesting realization/conclusion when they finally have the opportunity to negotiate. This is one of those stories where the conclusion is a statement on human nature. I can’t say much more about it without giving away the story, but trust me when I say that you’ll enjoy it.
I normally don’t partake of anthologies as a general rule, preferring to invest my reading time into larger stories (or series), but Mike McPhail has done a great job in making me rethink this position. If you’re interested in reading some interviews with the authors in the series, or if you’re interested in seeing what Mike has planned in the future, you can visit his site – http://www.milscifi.com.