Review: Across the Event Horizon

Across The Event HorizonMercurio D. Rivera’s stories punch you in the stomach with a great idea, toy with your emotions, then leave you gasping for more.

In this first collection of short stories, Across the Event Horizon, Rivera’s ideas will initially surprise you. They’ll stay with you for days after you read them.

Rivera understands there are infinite possibilities and realities when it comes to alien encounters – even when the alien is a situation. He writes about the chasms that we will need to cross when those encounters happen. And happen they will.

In this collection, you’ll read about aliens that communicate via the sense of smell (“The Scent of Their Arrival”), humans traveling far from Earth to find salvation on the other side of the universe (“Missionaries”), and how the pain inflicted on an enemy can keep a neighborhood safe (“Tu Sufrimiento Shall Protect Us”).

Communication and miscommunication are constant themes.

These stories will remind you of Ray Bradbury’s serious storytelling, Philip K. Dick’s sense of humor, and J.G. Ballard’s surreal and visceral imagery.  They’ve been widely anthologized for a reason — they’ll leave you wanting more.