“The first of the novelettes is Mercurio D. Rivera’s ‘Missionaries’ which takes us into a future where humans have spread throughout the galaxy and found it a pretty lonely place. There are aliens but they are utterly uninterested in communicating with the humans except for one party of missionaries, a rarity in this militantly atheist galaxy. This raises this party to superstardom and they are invited to another world where these aliens exist to see whether they could pull off the trick again. Despite their devotions, they don’t manage to capture another alien, and the one they travel with decides it’s had enough. In the end communication of a sort is achieved. As you’ll be aware if you’ve ever read any of Rivera’s work before he tends to write rather stream-of consciousness works and this is no exception really as the tale is told from the view point of one of the missionaries, a young girl exposed to lethal levels of radiation.” — John Fair
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“‘Take the leap, Cassie,’ it says/thinks/sings. Cassie and her fellow Saviours are crawling towards the abyss. It is the end of a pilgrimage, and the ritual requires endurance; their pain is exquisite as it burns inside their muscles. Pain is life, and the only fit offering to God. On a rogue, dead planet, the Saved One – an alien creature of dark energy – sits inside its pod of Bose-Einstein condensates, and watches them suffer.
‘Missionaries’ is the second of two standout pieces in this issue. Rivera takes a classic “science vs. religion” format and twists it, until the line between theology and physics is blurred beyond recognition. The story revolves around human attempts to communicate with the Saved One – a dark energy life form at the galactic centre, and the first of its species (the ‘Sagittarians’) to acknowledge humankind. …. The narrative jumps between past and present, which provides us with glimpses into Cassie’s life before the Saviours, and comes to represent her shattered perception of space and time. Her transition from atheism to devout worship is extremely compelling to read, and I enjoyed the use of narrative structure as a thematic tool. Rivera has found exactly the right balance here between entertainment and “cleverness,” so that his thoughts on the nature of the universe are just as engaging as Cassie’s tragic history.
I recommend this piece unreservedly…. [A]s we’ve seen in some of his other works (e.g. Dear Annabehls), he is not afraid to enhance his storytelling by playing with its structure. This is an excellent piece of SF, and a thought-provoking read about mankind’s search for understanding.” — Tangent Online
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