Limelight and Other Stories, by Lyndsey Croal
3 Nov 2024The Book
Synopsis:
Limelight is a collection of over twenty high-concept dark science fiction tales from near and far futures.
The title novelette-about a young woman brought back from near death by experimental tech, only to find her parents had her altered before she woke-anchors this collection which features five new exclusive stories alongside popular past works.
Lyndsey's work explores the bright potential and the dark reality of our near and far futures through the lenses of connection and loneliness, love and heartbreak, autonomy and exploitation, desire and greed, wonder and despair. If you've ever imagined alternate futures, craved answers to the mysteries of the universe, or feared what might be lurking just beyond our reach, then you need this collection.
My Review
Limelight and Other Stories is a high-concept dark sci-fi short stories collection, written by Lyndsey Croal and published by Shortwave Media. A sharp collection, playing with different lengths, from the vignette to the novelette, and which explores a wide range of subgenres, all sharing high emotional impact and in most of them, characters that are in diverse grade broken.
Croal divides the collection in two sections: Near and Far; particularly, I find this first section, Near, to be a bit scary, partly because of the uncanny valley sensation, but also because how well Croal manages to portray futures that could only be defined as dystopic, all in base a particular invention. How easy is to draw a parallel line between our timeline and the stories' one is one of the reasons that makes this collection excellent.
In comparison, the second section, Far, which tries to portray a much more advanced future, allows Croal to play a bit more with ideas, letting imagination fly; except for the own Limelight, I would say that the most emotionally heavy concepts are in this section. Themes tend to be more complex, resulting in more elaborate stories.
Limelight and Other Stories is a brilliant collection, where Croal shows her skills as author in all kinds of short formats; if you are looking for a thought-provoking collection, and you like media such as Black Mirror or Cyberpunk, is totally recommended.
The Author/s
Lyndsey Croal
Lyndsey is an Edinburgh-based author of strange and speculative fiction. She is a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Awardee, British Fantasy Award Finalist, Ladies of Horror Fiction Writers Grant Recipient, and former Hawthornden Fellow. Her short fiction and essays have been published in over eighty magazines and anthologies, and have placed or been shortlisted in several competitions including with Mslexia, British Fantasy Society, Apex Magazine, the Cymera Fest Prize for Speculative Fiction, Escape Pod, and Fractured Lit. Her debut two-part audio drama ‘Daughter of Fire and Water’ was released in 2021 with the Alternative Stories and Fake Realities podcast and was a BFA-finalist for Best Audio in 2022. Her novelette ‘Have You Decided on Your Question’ was published by Shortwave Publishing in 2023 and she has two short story collections forthcoming – LIMELIGHT from Shortwave Publishing in 2024 and DARK Crescent from Luna Press Publishing in 2025. She has also edited a number of projects including ‘Ghostlore: An Audio Fiction Anthology’ and Shoreline of Infinity Magazine’s Climate Change Special.
In 2019, she co-founded Edinburgh Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers and feels fortunate to have such an active literary scene on her doorstep. She is also a full member of SFWA.
Her writing is influenced by her professional background in climate and nature policy as well as her experience growing up in remote places.