Overscan is a Must-Read

13 Aug, 2025

Yesterday, I received in the mail a copy of Nantucket Lit's new Science Fiction/Fantasy short story anthology Overscan - a book I had ordered mostly to support my friend Amin whose story is featured in it.

Over the past two days, I read all of the stories, and I was amazed at all of them - more than I had ever expected. I've never been a big fan of short stories, but this knocked it out of the park every time.

Yesterday I also received an email from Nantucket Lit himself, Nicholas, asking me to share my thoughts on the book now that it has delivered. I read another book recently where I was able to reach out directly to the author and it felt great to hear back from him appreciating my thoughts - so I thought why not write a blog post review for this one with so many authors. In this post, I will go story by story and share my brief thoughts on each one.

Warning: I'm pretty bad at writing spoiler-free reviews, so this won't be one. Fair warning there will most definitely be spoilers ahead of this point.

In the Maize by Nicholas Bernhard - This extra-short (~1 page) story details a carnival go-er wandering through a corn maze with some pretty interesting imagery. I didn't expect much reading the introduction and seeing how long it was, but Nicholas does a pretty good job at writing something that brings you in to the character's fear pretty quickly. The way he ends the story made me think a bit about something like Predator and the fear that would invoke in a more common, real-life scenario. What a fantastic introduction to this series of stories!

The Warden by Bruce "Buffalo" Beck - Another short one, but another very interesting one too. There's a lot of media (mostly movies I'd say) that deal with death penalty execution stories, but most of them feel over-dramatized and more focused on the gritty details of their death and crime rather than the character themselves.¹² I particularly liked the author's focus on the perception of time - how time seemed to almost slow down as the minutes tick by before the "big moment". For a sci-fi anthology it almost makes you think of it as a dystopian story, and then you realize it happens in real life and that makes it cut extra deep. Another fantastic story overall.

Hers to Have by Sefton Eisenhart - This is the first story that feels like a really deep cut into science fiction, with a plot focused on the impact of AI. It almost feels like something straight out of a Black Mirror episode.³ The beginning kind of hit me pretty hard in the description of grief in a lost relationship and avoiding your past - but diving into the story, it feels like both a dreadful and optimistic look at human interactions with AI. You'd think a future of loneliness outside of your AI family would be awful, but the character ends on a positive note and it makes you wonder. But then diving into the whole "replicating a real person with AI" concept feels gross so that pulls me back a bit. It's stories like these that both fascinate and terrify me for the future of our world - what an amazing job at communicating this.

Galapagos Larvae by AT Gonzalez - A Jurassic Park kind of story that leaves you with some interesting questions. When I think about Jurassic Park I think about a story that basically boils down to "killed by their own hubris", which matches the theme of this story mostly, but this one doesn't go too much into the science concepts which leaves the ending a fascinating thought exercise for the reader. The over-exaggerated marketing style feels ripped straight out of real life which is interesting. It's nice to see well-known themes be put into a more modern context and still work well, without feeling like a direct rip-off and getting the author's personal touch fully exhibited throughout.

Those Who Breathe Easy by Benjamin Hollon - I'm in a group chat for beta readers of Amin's stories, and while we didn't get to read this one in advance, he's been talking about it for a while and it has gotten me pretty excited. I'll say - he definitely didn't disappoint. There's a lot of stories out there about space travel and losing oxygen in a moment of horror and panic - but I've never seen anything discussing the highly likely possibility that Amin covers here: the commodification of oxygen in space. I was never a kid with dreams of being an astronaut (the concept of space travel is terrifying) - but this right here would solidify it. "Just be uncomfortable with breathing for a bit for more money" is a dystopian nightmare that should probably be highlighted in sci-fi a bit more often. Amin did a fantastic job with this one - covering an area of sci-fi stories that I've never thought about, but connects perfectly with almost everything I've read.

Lonely Human by Seth Patterson - The one story in this book with alien life turns the regular sci-fi portrayal on its head, with a bit of romance involved. I'm not much of a fan of romance in books - as I feel like they're always a bit too cheesy and predictable for my liking. What I found really interesting in this story though is the main character - Jaren - and his actions outside of the true romance ending. The way we see his grief through descriptions of vivid art and mindless wandering is fascinating, and his act of selflessness in his interactions with the "wish-granter" felt like a great turning point.

The Mirror by David W. Stoner - Ending off the anthology is a more mysterious story of a guy seeming to follow his own shadow - or at least that's how I'm interpreting it. It felt like a more thought-intensive story than the previous ones, requiring a more personal interpretation - and the one I'm taking is of a man who has such a low self-esteem that he feels a sort of hatred for his own "shadow"/ego. Chasing it around town only to find out that its yourself is an interesting portrayal, and seeing it through the lens of a mirror is a great way to make these concepts a bit clearer. I'm sure there's a deeper psychological or philosophical argument to be made here, but I just like reading an interesting story and this certainly made the mark.

The editor writes in the end about how this book is a bit of a multi-stage combination of reasons for writing/publishing: both a book for and by the Fediverse in support of his open-source e-book writing software, as well as a pushback against so many authors using artificial intelligence for writing.

In terms of a book for the Fediverse, a decentralized platform full of open-source ideals, I think this hit the mark perfectly with execution both in the making of and themes of the book.

When it comes to AI writing, I share the editors sentiments almost exactly. I have seen some interesting output from AI in playing with it myself - mostly in the ways of programming, but even that I don't think has a full leg to stand on at this point.⁴ But when I see AI writing, not only does it feel unnatural/inhuman, but it also has so many logical mistakes and makes up information. Writing is a task for humans, to put thoughts on paper (or more in a metaphorical sense with the internet) is a innately human thing and AI doesn't even have true thoughts to put on paper - just a series of predictions on what word comes next based on hard logic. I appreciate what Nantucket Lit is doing to push back on AI "slop" in writing and bring more human voices to the forefront.

I strongly recommend you check out this anthology - you can even get it as a "pay what you want" e-book if you don't want to buy the paperback like I did! I enjoyed every second of reading this, and I expect to feel the same way when I eventually come back for a re-read. I love both science-fiction and fantasy and this hit the mark for both perfectly.

Thanks for reading what I believe has now become my longest review for the shortest book I've written about - I appreciate everyone who takes the time to read my thoughts.

73, WW0CJ

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