Exploring the 200 word format.
These and others at http://richardbunningbooksandreviews.com under 'book in progress'
Only e book - paperback to follow.
Spiders have enslaved man. We are in the future, in a book dictated to 'the scribe' by a time-lord, one Orlando Oversight. This book appears now, a couple of hundred years ahead of the events it depicts, as like all science fiction it needs to prepare mankind to face his future. Nature provided two highly advanced sentient species to the Lush System, the spider-like Aranians and decapodal Cheetan that looks not so dissimilar to a louse. Both creatures are bigger and stronger than even the strongest of humans.
Now, the Lush system has a large population of humans, harvested from Earth. Homo sapiens, along with other Earth species provide the spiders with meat. Humans also provide a vast amount of the labour. Possibly all is not lost for the humans, or yeng as they are there called. Possibly a fighter that has borrowed the name of the legendary Spartacus can lead humankind to a new 'promised land'.
A giant Arcraft is being built to carry all three sentient species on a vast voyage across space to find fresh pastures. But exactly who or what may be aboard is unclear. This adventure starts in philosophy and science, runs through blood, passion, love and hate towards an adventurous end, which just may be a new beginning. This isn't horror, although ones own mind may paint horrific scenes, this isn't paranormal, though hardly normal. This is speculative future history, which in all probability will be one day happen almost exactly as you read it.
I won this novel as part of a giveaway through Booklikes, and I was really looking forward to it. I enjoy flash fiction and even write it myself, unfortunately I'd say that a good 2/3 of the stories did not read as actual "stories" to me. Richard Bunning is nice enough to label the stories so that we know if it's supposed to be science fiction, romantic suspense, historical fiction, journalistic nonfiction, etc. However, many of the categories that have "fiction" as part of the name (such as historical fiction or fact-based fiction) come across as essays that someone may have had to write for a school project. Perhaps this is just Richard's style of writing, but unfortunately it wasn't a style I enjoyed. Now, I did enjoy several of his stories, and from all different "categories" (so it's not just an issue of me preferring certain types of genre and not others) and some of them really stood out and excellent:
Story 10: What's in those coloured smudges? (Paranormal Fiction) - this was a great story showing how someone with synaesthesia sees the world. It also snows the depth of emotion that people can put in their artwork and writing that may not be visible to someone with standard senses.
Story 11: Disassociated Consciousness and Hope (Speculative Fiction) - Consciousness after death has always been an interesting subject, and the author deals with it well in this story.
Story 17: Hostages, Combinations for Survival (Suspense Fiction) - I love the way that the author tells the entire story in a way that you don't know exactly what the protagonist is going to do, and lets us all understand the ending even though the story doesn't follow through to the end.
Story 24: First my complicity dies, then I (Warning - Sexual Slavery) (Real Life Fiction) - This story leaves the ending open, so that you only hope that the protagonist is successful with her plans.
And finally, Story 49: Pinks Reflection (Psychological Fiction) - Inside the mind of a madman.
Out of 50 stories, I only really connected with 5 of them. Now, there were some others that were also "stories" but the majority of this book seemed as if the author was padding the book with research and facts for random things rather than actual telling a story. Even with flash fiction, there should still be some conflict and either a resolution or hope that it's leading up to a resolution. It's supposed to be a story, not something that you would read out of a textbook. I gave this 3 stars on amazon (3 1/2 stars on booklikes) because I see promise in this author. However, I feel like he has set himself a goal with this project and he wasn't able to conclude it successfully.
Richard Bunning - 23/05/2014
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