https://www.freedomfiction.com/2024/09/martian-helix-by-engle/ An eclectic mix of all flavours of genre fiction Tue, 24 Sep 2024 15:44:18 +0000 hourly 1 https://www.freedomfiction.com/2024/09/martian-helix-by-engle/#comment-36795 Tue, 24 Sep 2024 15:44:18 +0000 https://www.freedomfiction.com/?p=3321#comment-36795 I can well understand why this was short-listed for the award. It is superb! It started a little slowly, but in that time the reader came to know Hina — whom I silently rooted for as a smart but lonely person — and Wolf. Wolf and Hina had a lot of memorable ironic one liners which were rather endearing. When Hina unexpectedly perished, the whole story was up in the air. Analogies to Alien and The Blob are irresistable. The style of the prose is classic sci-fi: casual use by the characters, of scientific jargon made it all believable. The inevitable growth of the Martian creature was inexorable and eerie and I really got into what was, for FFJ, a lengthy story. A wonderful job!

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