A huge thank you to NetGalley and Titan Books for the eARC of this amazing collection!**I absolutely adored this collection of short stories. They ranged from cute strange to effing weird, and explored themes such a space travel, shape-shifting, and climate change. I was very impressed with the cohesion of the stories despite the range of topics, and Nina Allan has a way with words.I found myself stopping multiple times to reread a sentence then jot it down in my notes. Here are a few of these q...

I’ve never heard of the author and her short story collection turned out to be way longer than the original page count (erroneously listed when the Netgalley ARC first appeared) had led me to believe and so I read some of it and put it away. For a while. This wasn’t a quality thing - the few stories I read were actually very good, if somewhat strangely ended (more on this later), it was simply the matter of my dislike for fat books and a giant TBR list to deal with. The other day, for some reaso...

Before this short story collection the only work of Nina Allan that I'd read was The Silver Wind; a book that in a lot of ways felt like an anthology due to the way it was structured. Despite this only being the second book of Allan's that I'd picked up it was immediate to me very early on that this was her work, as I've found that this author has a very definitive sense of style to her work that makes it instantly recognisable as hers.The stories presented in this collection span the entirety o...

Nina Allan is best known as a writer of speculative fiction, but her stylistic references and inspirations are surprisingly varied. The Art of Space Travel is a collection of stories written over a period of about fifteen years, providing an interesting cross-section of Allan’s oeuvre for fans and newcomers alike.The title piece suggests that it is a work of science fiction. In actual fact, the references to space travel and the speculative elements are less important than the human relationship...

There is an air of haunting that hangs over this entire collection of short stories: a sense of bewilderment from the characters as they glimpse what might be the truth; a sense of disbelief – the meaning slipping away from them as they try to comprehend what may really be happening. Might be. May be. Because there are few certainties here. The sense that something strange or unearthly is happening is pervasive – but maybe that’s just what you, the reader, are choosing to see. Nina Allan’s The A...

Everything I've read by Nina Allan has been good, but not all of it has been to my taste. I feel like there are two versions of Allan; the speculative writer whose fiction is always tinged with a thread of horror, and the writer more concerned with magical suburbia, whose style feels deliberately old-fashioned, harking back to the 1950s and 1960s. In the first camp, I'd put her brilliant novels The Race and The Rift; in the second, The Dollmaker and The Silver Wind, which were undoubtedly accomp...

This review contains mild spoilers for the stories Amethyst, Heroes, A Thread of Truth, and Marielena in this collection. Short story collections serve many purposes. They are catalogues of an author’s smaller opuses, or a snapshot of one era in their careers. The Art of Space Travel and Other Stories is a map, one in which the author as cartographer charts a journey that the reader is invited to follow. The stories, edited into one volume, are active participants in a larger tale exploring the

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.For some unknown reason when I picked this up I thought I was getting a collection of Sci-Fi stories, perhaps due to the title and the cover. However, this is a lot more a collection of character-driven stories that explore memory, loss and human connection. So, while there are some talks of space travel and sci-fi elements, these aren't your typical sci-fi short stories. In the authors note at the very beginning Nina Allan talks ab...

The Art of Space Travel is an outstanding collection of short stories: some are speculative, some are not, some blur the lines, all are written in a rich and engaging style that makes each and every character feel like a fully-formed human being. That’s all anyone else really needs to know; the rest of this review is for me. There’s rarely any point in reading a book review written by someone who is obsessed with the author’s work, and like many of my Nina Allan reviews, this is going to be very...

The Art of Space Travel and Other Stories[Blurb goes here]This is a beautifully written book, the prose feeling almost poetic, Nina Allan has something special here, since her style goes back and forward as if talking to someone that has ADHD. Her characters thought process jumps all over the place, enriching their feelings/stories for specific situations. This was something I really enjoyed. Unfortunately, some of the stories are 'just there' they don't have a deeper meaning, and end up abruptl...

The Art of Space Travel and other stories by Nina Allan is further proof that when the Guardian UK called Nina as one of the 50 writers you should read was a very accurate call. I have only read this collection and one of her novels but I would say that I would be happy to go through the backlist sooner rather than later (In fact I have a copy of The Silver Wind near the top of my TBR).Her strengths are her characters, which are all fully fleshed out, you feel that their lives go on even after t...

A collection that I could not emotionally connect with and I found the style and approach jarring and a tad dated - not for me Full review - https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/bl...

I quiet, lovely book about relationships and family, laid on a foundation of soft speculative fiction that adds a pleasant twinkle of newness but never takes over the humanness of the stories.It's a warm hug of a blend between sci-fi and literary fiction, leaning more toward the latter with its focus on love, loss, and understanding. The stories weave interconnected and you get a great sense of place in a wasted near-future that is still recognizably our own.Allan pulls her characters along as t...

6.5/10 starsMy full review on my blog.I am partial to collections of short stories. I very much like the format, which for me works as a beginning of a conversation between the writer and the reader. A story comes into being as an idea: it may be not fully thought through, unpolished and raw, but it’s scintillating enough that cannot be left alone; it needs to be shown to the world and elicit a reaction. I read short stories to be intellectually challenged, however minutely or extensively. There...

Content Warnings: alzheimers/memory loss, degenerative/terminal illness, arachnophobia, mild body horror. The Collection Overall: Nina Allan's The Art of Space Travel and Other Stories is a very subtle type of sci-fi that meanders through themes of art, memory, connection, global catastrophe, and what it means to be human. I find my favorite stories in this collection only just briefly brush against the sci-fi (containing only a suggestion of what has changed in the world) before presenting a wh...

An interesting collection of stories, many with similar topics and ideas, which as a writer, I do find fascinating, as it provided a lens through which to view another writers history and the ways in which they've changed over the years. There are similarities in the subjects, loss, hope, the need for things to mean something, and while the sentiments may appear the same, the nuance is only visible as you read on and you see the subtle changes, the slight deviations from previous narratives, the...

I didn't love this. Since its a short story collection arranged chronologically from across many years they gradually get better over time, but only a few really stood out to me

This is an artful (pun intended ) book of short stories. As she has done in the past, the stories are linked by recurring characters or places. Some stories are direct precursors (“Microcosmos” being the early story of the narrator of “The Common Tongue, the Present Tense, the Known”), while others are more allusive. She calls this out explicitly in her introduction, while commenting that her recurring themes are memory, loss, time and sense of place. This is clear in her writing, where a narrat...

I am grateful to Titan Books for a free advance copy of The Art of Space Travel to consider for review.I'm always delighted to see a book by Nina Allan coming and The Art of Space Travel is a real blessing, collecting some fifteen years of her wonderful, closely examines, weird(ish) short stories. I really enjoy an authors' short story collection - it gives a glimpse into a body of their work, highlighting themes and concerns you might miss in a single story, even in a single novel. These fourte...

Few things delight me more than a strong, consistent short story collection. Anthologies, by their very nature, are varied, and the constant switches between authors can prevent the reader from gaining a sense of flow. But well-written, single-author collections are to be treasured. There is nothing like being taken by the hand, and following the author on a winding path to their inner world.This is especially true with Nina Allan’s collection, The Art of Space Travel and Other Stories. Allan’s