How It Unfolds (The Far Reaches collection)

4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars | 3,454 ratings

Price: 0.99

Last update: 07-31-2024


About this item

An astronaut’s interstellar mission is a personal journey of a thousand second chances in an exhilarating short story by James S. A. Corey, the New York Times bestselling author of The Expanse series.

Roy Court and his crew are taking the trip of a lifetime—several lifetimes in fact—duplicated and dispatched across the galaxies searching for Earthlike planets. Many possibilities for the future. Yet for Roy, no matter how many of him there are, there’s still just one painful, unchangeable past. In what world can a broken relationship be reborn? The universe is so vast, there’s always room for hope.

James S. A. Corey’s How It Unfolds is part of The Far Reaches, a collection of science-fiction stories that stretch the imagination and open the heart. They can be read or listened to in one sitting.


From the Publisher

A thousand worlds. A thousand second chances. Read for free with Amazon Prime.

Top reviews from the United States

Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Great short story
Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2024
Great story! Without giving any spoilers, the authors take a cliched idea and make it feel fresh. That's tough to do. They also do a great job of injecting a human element into it with great characters and beautiful glimpses of everyday life to offset the otherworldliness.

Definitely worth a read!
Concha
4.0 out of 5 stars Cool short story about space and our relationship to the past
Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2023
I bought the entire The Far Reaches series on a whim and so far so good.

This short story is about a man, Roy, who is part of a team of astronauts on a mission to terraform new planets (presumably due to overpopulation). The twist is: they're not being sent into space, their clones are. More specifically, when the mission lands on a new planet it will create a duplicate of the team and everything they need to form a new colony. This way, they can bypass the problem of these journeys often lasting more than a person's lifetime - just synthesize new copies of these people when you get there!

The premise is really cool, and although the science is a bit dubious and not really well explained (how do you duplicate matter using just light?), it works well inside the universe of the story. However, the constant jumping back and forth in the timeline and the different perspectives makes it a bit confusing to follow in the beginning. A different format maybe would've given the reader a deeper understanding of this universe, but I think the point of the author was not to write a hard sci-fi story but more of a philosophical exploration of the concept of time and our relationship with the past. Especially since the main focus of the story seems to be Roy's relationship with his ex-wife, Anjula.

In Anjula's words:

“It’s possible to be faithful to something that’s in the past. It’s not a betrayal to build something new when something old is finished.”

and Roy's response:

"Honor the past without living in it"

This is a story about realizing that just because something ends doesn’t mean it wasn’t beautiful while it lasted and also, nothing lasts forever. Things will always end and it's not because they are over that they were a failure. It does a nice job with the parallelism between Roy and Anjula's story and the fall of past civilizations. And the title was clever, I liked it.

As a personal preference, I think I would've liked this story more if it was more focused on the sci-fi element rather than Roy's history with Anjula. For a short story I get why it was written like this, but as a sci-fi nerd, I think I would've liked a longer story with more plot and more focus on the other characters and this universe the author created.

All in all, the story is pretty dope, it just isn't 5 stars to me because I wanted more sci-fi. On to the next one!
Barb Waloven
5.0 out of 5 stars A Million Chances to Get it Right
Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2024
What if you had a million chances, opportunities, scenarios to get something right? This was a pretty cool science fiction love and survival story. Full of hope on many levels. Quick read.
Nathan springer
3.0 out of 5 stars Good book
Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2024
Kinda hard to follow. With how the book is laid out and the messages in-between but wonderful story would recommend
Norm Zurawski
4.0 out of 5 stars It's Fine
Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2023
This was a good little book. I don't really think the Corey "author" is great at fleshing stuff out, so I think it could be better if it had been done by a Dennis Taylor or the like. But it was interesting enough. The last section/chapter is wonky. But I liked it enough.
theresah
5.0 out of 5 stars An enormous theory
Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2023
How It Unfolds (The Far Reaches, #1)
by James S.A. Corey
the audible story seems longer than the print, but this is a complex story written in short form. How would we progress throughout the galaxy? How would we pass our history on to generations, planets, and galaxies throughout the universe? Its a remarkable story of love, of overcoming and just moving on from where we are. Showing that known history is remarkable to help stopping tragedy. Yet are we held by our prior mistakes.
Otto Neely
5.0 out of 5 stars A very satisfying short story.
Reviewed in the United States on March 27, 2024
I loved this story. I had forgotten how gripping the short story format can be for the reader when it is written by a master like Corey.
Lindsay Chung
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting take on the future of humanity
Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2023
Short stories are really hard to be able to dig deep into the complexities and science, that a good sci-fi story needs. That being said, the authors of How It Unfolds have done a really good job of giving us a snapshot of an interesting take on the future of humanity and what comes next. I wish we could go further in the story, and really get to know these characters and some more of their struggles, but I was pleasantly surprised at how much we did get given that this is a short story.

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