The Long Fall Up and Other Stories
William Ledbetter
Biography
William Ledbetter is a Nebula Award winning author with two novels and more than seventy speculative fiction short stories and non-fiction articles published in five languages, in markets such as Asimov's, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog, Escape Pod and the SFWA blog.

He's been a space and technology geek since childhood and spent most of his non-writing career in the aerospace industry. He is a member of SFWA, the National Space Society of North Texas, and a Launch Pad Astronomy workshop graduate. He lives near Dallas with his wife, a needy dog and three spoiled cats. (William Ledbetter, n.d)
Blurb
From bestselling Nebula-Award winning William Ledbetter comes a groundbreaking collection of science fiction short stories that will bend your heart like a black hole. From AI to robot medics to life on Mars, Ledbetter takes real tech, blends it with hard science fact, and invents futures full of fantastic fiction. Includes 17 previously published stories and one original story. (Fantastic Fiction, n.d)

The Long Fall Up
The Long Fall Up short story is first in this anthology. This story hooks you from the start, with excerpts from various time periods leading up to the climatic event. Throughout the story I was reminded of other Science Fiction ideas and motifs, like Frederik Pohl’s Gateway. Both Pohl and Ledbetter discuss and examine a world in space. How people, if subjected to long periods, would no longer be able to return to Earth, without machines aiding them, or quite probably, not at all. Ledbetter discusses the evolution of humanity, and how corporations would still want to control economies, by subjugating the people.
It’s a bleak world, where the stars are not the limit, rather, the limit is where the companies say it is. What is space going to become? Is space a place for pioneers? Or a place of further subjugation for people? It’s a thought provoking short story and I believe the best stories in science fiction get you thinking and this certainly had me thinking about the future of space mastery.
Additionally, I was also reminded of 2001: Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke, but it was Kubrik’s HAL that came to mind, the ominous red eye hovering offer the space passengers. However, the chill I had when reading about the AI quickly dissipated into something else. Which I believe was Ledbetter’s intention, using the idea of all powerful AI and turning it on it’s head. Ledbetter provides a promising future for man and machine, a partnership which is not often discussed in Science Fiction today.
We fear the machine.
The media today scares us with old provocations of ‘they’ll steal your job!’ (Forbes, 2023; Harvard Business School, 2023; The Atlantic, n.d) But Ledbetter anthropomorphises Huizhu and instead of painting either man, or machine, as each other’s betters, he shows how sometimes we can be equals.
There were a lot of first person stories at the beginning of the book and I wondered why the author, or publisher, had decided to put them one after the other, rather than mixed in with the others. Some of the stories I did not like, with exposition hitting you hard and fast, while sloppy dialogue left a bitter taste on my tongue. There is a mixture of first person and other perspectives throughout the anthology though, but I think the title sums up my experience with this book. The Long Fall Up and Other Stories. The other stories did not quite grip me as well as that first one, The Long Fall Up. There was a mixture of ideas and different tales here within the anthology, but I think the best was is The Long Fall Up, maybe that’s why the author, or publishers decided to place it first, or maybe it’s just a complete coincidence.

References
William Ledbetter, (n.d). Accessed via: http://www.williamledbetter.com/
Fantastic Fiction, (n.d). Accessed via: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/l/william-ledbetter/long-fall-up.htm
Forbes, (2023). Accessed Via: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2023/05/24/artificial-intelligence-may-be-coming-for-your-job/
Harvard Business School, (2023). Accessed Via: https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/is-ai-coming-for-your-job
The Atlantic, (n.d). Accessed via: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/ai-chatgpt-productivity-work/674090/

Science fiction short stories often struggle to balance their scientific explanations with creating compelling characters. No such problems here. In a widely varied selection of tales, Ledbetter covers diverse topics including bodily autonomy, the ethics of overpopulation, piracy and cybernetic enhancement, while maintaining enough humanity in the characters to catch and keep the reader's attention. While, like many anthologies, it has highlights and lowlights, even the weaker chapters are well written and entertaining, and the rest are absolutely fantastic. Very much look forward to seeing what this brilliant writer comes up with next.