It's always great to read an Australian collection of spec fic short stories, and this is a good one that is raising awareness of a cause close to my heart. Reading is always a balm to my soul when I am in pain, as with many other people, and these stories have a lot of heart and soul in them - tough yet tender.

The non-fiction info about suicide in Australia is well researched and works well interspersed with excellent short fiction. I would have benefited a lot from this book in my own suicidal years, and will not hesitate to recommend it to fellow spec fic fans, and readers of good fiction who are in distress.

High Tide At Hot Water Beach by Paul Haines is particularly moving, especially given his recent death from cancer at a young age. I also loved The Encounter by Sasha Beattie.

An interesting collection of Australian SF & F short stories, donated for an important cause. Unlike several similar 'beneit anthologies' I've read, the decision here was to keep the cause front and centre with brief articles on the topic between each story. In some ways that was really successful - both in spreading some important information and as a sort of pallet cleanser between stories - but towards the end of the collection they were starting to pall.

The stories themselves contain some real gems - "High Tide at Hot Water” by Paul Haines and A Moment, A Day, A Year...by Pamela Freeman, in particular, have lingered in my memory for weeks, and reward re-reading. Unfortunately, as a collection, there's a certain sameness to many of the stories' shapes, despite the variety of settings: better for dipping in to than for reading cover to cover. ( )

“Hope” is an Australian anthology of science fiction and fantasy short stories with the aim of helping raise suicide awareness. Besides the stories there’re some very interesting essays about suicide, showing statistics, signs to pay attention to, or how to cope with the decease of a beloved one.
The stories share the theme of hope, in the sense that you can always expect the future to look up, and their quality is irregular, although all of them have good intentions.
I find quite moving “High Tide at Hot Water”, by Paul Haines, just because the protagonist risks everything to keep on living. “The Haunted Heart”, by Sean Williams, is an excelente sci-fi story in which you discover little by little what’s going on. I love ““The God of the Mountain”, by Graham Storrs, for its sense of humour and how the protagonist realizes the priests have been lying to the people for centuries. “Duty and Sacrifice”, by Alan Baxter, is great for how the author shows the past of the protagonist, how that world words, and the uplifting end it has. “The Choosing”, by Rowena Cory Daniells, and “A Moment, A Day, A Year…”, by Pamela Freeman, are both charming and show young protagonists on the verge of adulthood.
As for the rest, I think many are too short for what they want to tell, and sometimes the come across as whimsical, confusing or abrupt. The weakest one, I think, is “Eliot”, de Benjamin Solah, about a gay teenage. It’s far too melodramatic. ( )

I like the idea of this book, and interspersing short stories with shorter pieces of information on suicide worked well.

The short stories of speculative fiction covered death and suicide in various ways and they were interesting, just not brilliant. ( )

I have been to plenty of charity gigs before but I think that Hope might be the first time I have read an anthology supporting a good cause. Unfortunately, I am not sure that the concept successfully bridges the gap between the two forms of artistic expression. The result put me in mind of some of the open mic events I have been too: a mixed bag of performers, including one or two who should perhaps have checked their tuning and others you wouldn't mind seeing again. Most off-putting though was to have an over-enthusiastic compère, punctuating every change over with earnest talks about suicide prevention.

Translating back into the world of books, that means a bunch of short stories (largely around science fiction and fantasy themes), interleaved with short essays on various aspects of suicide, particularly in an Australian context. Most of the stories could broadly be described as containing some aspect of hope (although the first one almost threw me; it felt like inviting the Sex Pistols to play at a gig supporting teenage celibacy). For my tastes though, few were particularly remarkable and I found the constant intrusions became wearing.

Of course suicide prevention is an important cause and if you want to support it and get a book to browse through, I wouldn't want to put you off. Just taken as an anthology of speculative fiction though, I wouldn't want to stretch beyond 2/5 for this one. ( )