Fantastic hope

Fantastic Hope is a 2020 anthology of sixteen original science fiction and fantasy short stories, edited by Laurell K. Hamilton and William McCaskey.

The brief the editors set was optimism: stories in which people hold a line, keep a promise, or find a reason to keep going. The contributors answer it across a wide spread of genres, from military science fiction to urban fantasy.

Patricia Briggs contributes 'Asil and the Not-Date', set in her Mercy Thompson world, and Hamilton closes the book with 'Zombie Dearest'. Other stories come from Larry Correia, Kacey Ezell, Kevin J. Anderson, John G. Hartness, Griffin Barber, L. E. Modesitt, Jr., Robert E. Hampson and Michael Z. Williamson, among others.

As with most anthologies, the pieces vary in tone and length, and several are entry points into their authors' larger series rather than self-contained worlds.