Wayward — M.W. Fowler

M.W. Fowler's Wayward: scifi stories & poems is a wonderful collection in which young characters experience futuristic adventures. The science is low-key, but the stories are anything but in this whimsical collection featuring a boy who tries to win over his high school crush while fending off space chimps in a play, a girl who has to learn how to fly an escape pod before her world is destroyed, a gallant space knight who loves his laser pistol more than the space princess, a young cowboy who must defeat the villain arriving the next day by hovertrain, the spaceworm trying to find his perfect wormhole abode, and so many more. Throughout all of the stories and poems, Fowler rediscovers the idea of humanity's innate need to explore juxtaposed against the vastness of space and the grounding of Earth, humanity's home planet, in such a way that readers of all ages will enjoy.