Unknown Destinies volume 1, edited by Fiction4All (ebook review).
‘Unknown Destinies Volume 1’ is an anthology of twenty-one stories from different authors, but not twenty-one different authors as some have several yarns included.
The sages say you need strong openers and closers in an anthology, and the editors of ‘Unknown Destinies Volume 1’ did so with stories from Geoff Nelder, author of the ‘Flying Crooked’ series of SF novellas.
First up is ‘What Bot Invaders?’, a tale of smart technology going wrong. Leanne wakes late because the alarm doesn’t go off to find that her toothbrush rattles her skull and her car wants to crash itself. Arriving at work, she sees that the whole country is in the same plight, but who’s behind it?
Two stories by Nelder end the book. ‘The Orbe Below’ is set in the far future. Pebble, a supply ship for asteroid mining, is sent to investigate a minor planet orbiting a dying sun. About the size of Pluto, it has higher gravity than it should and a perfectly smooth surface. The film is an old-fashioned space adventure with modern science, and I loved it.
In ‘Doppler Effect’, an asteroid hits Mercury Space Station, and Engineer Ding manages to eject in an escape pod. He’s stuck orbiting Mercury at speed. Another escape pod containing Engineer Dang is going the other way, and they may eventually collide. Communication is essential, but Dang is difficult. I liked the story but didn’t get the ending. Sometimes, writers are too subtle for me.
‘Clickety Clackety’ is a touching and clever little fantasy by Wynelda Ann Deaver. A smelly old beggar suddenly appears in front of Jenna and says, ‘Clickety clackety, miserly wiserly,’ prompting her to guess his name. She knows him. Her soul knows him, and the game is crucial. At night, she dreams of fairy tales and wizards.
In ‘Dog Days’ by Carl Hughes, Mia, aged just twenty-five, is in hospital with a terrible, agonising stomach ulcer. She blames her stressful job as a legal executive. She wakes up one morning to find that Assunta Creak, the old lady in the next bed, has the head of a sheepdog. Everybody in the ward has dog heads, and so do the nurses. Black comedy with a twist.
‘Lucifer And The Large Hadron Collider’ by Ian McKinley has scientists restarting the Large Hadron Collider after an upgrade. A silver sphere appears over the master control panel. ‘You rang?’ it says. Everyone panics except Maureen McNeil, so it makes her the spokeswoman for planet Earth, and she has a chat. SF stories about the Collider are quite common now, often clever, and this instance is a fine one. ‘Atom-smashing monkeys’ is a good description of the human race.
‘Ninja Kitty’ by Jackk N. Killington is very odd. Daimyo Kuro is a tyrant in a Japanese sort of setting but with animal characters, and the Ninja Kitty tells how she kills him.
Liam A. Spinage has two stories. In ‘Flotsam’, set in the coastal town of Esperanza, two children, Ocarina and Serena, find a lady on the beach, clearly washed up from a shipwreck, for the debris of it is nearby. They tell their parents, Agrio and Alegria. The village has a rule regarding flotsam: the finders keep it, but a percentage must be donated to the town. Barzao, a local troublemaker, thinks Agrio’s family is cheating, hiding stuff away. Although there were unexpected twists, the ending was not entirely clear.
‘Poster Girl’ features Faith, Hope and Joy, best friends in Salvation, Montana, a decent, god-fearing community. When Joy goes missing, her father, Sheriff Carpenter, searches desperately, as does everyone else. Small-town America is an excellent setting for many stories, and the plot is well told, but the ending didn’t quite gel for me.
Rie Sheridan Rose has three tales in the book. ‘Steel Velvet’ tells the story of Carter Dallas, a super-nerd with an exceptional IQ, 20/20 vision, and exceptional athletic ability. He works for the World Space Consortium, trying to get mankind to colonise planets, but his hobby is building the perfect woman. Such a man could acquire a fine woman ready-made by nature? It’s an intriguing yarn that becomes increasingly fantastical towards the end.
‘Death In The Dust’ is set on a moonbase colony. A naked body is found outside airlock 2, beheaded. Fingerprints identify the corpse as Foster Danbridge, stepson of the governor, so Director Carruthers and Police Chief Osaka had better solve the mystery pronto. A solid detective tale, but the ending came suddenly. It’s a strong plot and perhaps needed to be longer with a few red herrings thrown in.
‘Home by Sunset’ has a woman on a galloping horse desperate to be home by sunset lest the Wraiths get her. This introduces itself as a mediaeval-style horror yarn but turns out to be something different. Although the story is clever, it didn’t quite resonate with me.
There are seven stories from Marise Morland, mostly very short and very quirky. In ‘Ego Trip’, a king or a hologram goes walking in his city, where subjects tremble at the sight of him or tourists gape. Which is it?
This piece is characterised by its odd and subtle nature. ‘Buttoned Up’ has Vooq and his girlfriend Zozara tasked with tracking down five powerful buttons that guarantee the peace between the Exfoliant Systems and the Bellicosian Cluster in a brief Douglas Adams-style space opera.
‘Pursuit’ is in a similar vein. The Reyrith and the Dremms have been at war since before history began. Their conflict has spread across half the galaxy; every habitable planet has been destroyed, and automated war machines fight on. Reyrithian battlescout 12-20 chases a Dremm ship. ‘I’m in Charge’ deals with important issues. Who is in charge? And how do you spell ‘effulgent’?’ Cosmic fun with layers of reality.
In ‘Sustenance’, Teon, an apprentice Weavewright, tries to recruit certain human artists with the potential to help maintain the Weave that underpins the cosmos. Humans are difficult, though, especially artists.
‘Roxette’ demonstrates that the life of a spaceman’s wife is often challenging. ‘Crowning Achievement’ features a re-enactment of the coronation of Elizabeth II by the Crown Protectorate of Brexit for the 999th ESP-fod. The show must go on. I enjoyed the work of Marise Morland and will look out for it in the future.
‘Caballo Chronicles: The Nocturnals vs. The Boondockers’ by Chris Rodriguez was confusing with many characters and a lot of magic, I think.
In ‘Chico On The Floor’ by Rickey Rivers Jr, the protagonist and his fellows are chained to computers in bright rooms and forced to type endlessly. They yearn to escape. The last line of the story is truly brilliant. If I were the editor, I would have closed the anthology with ‘Chico On The Floor’, but the publishers decided otherwise.
‘Unknown Destinies Volume One’ is an entertaining potpourri of different short stories from a talented bunch of writers. Not every tale will click with every reader, but that’s the nature of anthologies. It’s worth a look if you like variety.
Eamonn Murphy
August 2025
(pub: Fiction4All, 2025. 182 page paperback. Price: $14.00 (US), £11.00 (UK). ISBN: 978-178695-902-7).
check out website: https://fiction4all.com/
