Modern Classics of Science Fiction

by Gardner Dozois (Editor)

An anthology of frequently neglected science fiction tales includes stories by William Gibson, Pat Murphy, Cordwainer Smith, Joanna Russ, Gene Wolfe, Roger Zelazny, and twenty-one other writers.

Genres: Science Fiction, Anthologies, Short Stories, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Fantasy

672 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Gardner Raymond Dozois was an American science fiction author and editor. He was editor of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine from 1984 to 2004. He won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards, both as an editor and a writer of short fiction.
Wikipedia entry: Gardner Dozois

http://us.macmillan.com/author/gardne...

Reviews

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

A massive and very eclectic collection of stories by Dozois; first published in 1991, most of the stories are from the 80s. I appreciated the author's introduction to each story, sometimes more than the stories themselves. The only thematic element among the stories seems to be Dozois' own enjoyment of them, but apparently, I do not share the same tastes.

Like most short story anthologies, this collection has some great stories and some meh ones, but the meh ones (for me) outshined the rest. The standouts?

"Aristotle and the Gun" by L. Sprague de Camp
"The Moon Moth" by Jack Vance (my favorite by far in the collection).
"The Barrow" by Ursula K. Le Guin
"Salvador" by Lucius Shepard
"The ugly chicken" by Howard Waldrop.

Lots of other big names here, including Theodore Sturgeon, Roger Zelazny, Samuel Delany, Gene Wolfe, Brian Aldiss, William Gibson, Connie Willis and Bruce Sterling.

Overall, enjoyable, but I did skip through the stinkers (Wolfe's tale for example). 2.5 stars, rounding up for the killer Vance tale!

[Norman Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

This 1992 anthology spans stories published from 1956 to 1989, probably a bit too early at the time to classify all of them as classics. A number of them have lost some luster over the subsequent 30 years, but there are still enough quality stories to enjoy. Here are some of the highlights.

"The Country of the Kind" by Damon Knight (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1956 - short story)
4 Stars
A disturbing look at a near future where humans no longer have destructive, antisocial, or aggressive behavior, but where a degenerate who retains those traits believes that without them, great art and creativity also cannot exist.

"The Moon Moth" by Jack Vance (Galaxy Magazine, August 1961 - novelette)
5 Stars
In a society where everyone wears masks to indicate social status, mood, and relationships, and where communication is primarily done by singing and the playing of small musical instruments, the various types of which also convey social status, etc., a diplomat from another planet arrives faced with not only learning how to navigate the subtleties of the masks and music, but to also capture an escaped fugitive who may be hiding in plain sight under someone else's mask. How the diplomat, who wears the Moon Moth mask, solves his problems is world building at its finest.

"This Moment of the Storm" by Roger Zelazny (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1966 - novelette) 1967 Hugo Award finalist and 1967 Nebula Award finalist
4 Stars
On an alien world, the human settlers must contend with a massive rain storm that devastates their community. The protagonist is a man who has spent hundreds of years in suspended animation, traveling the voids between planets, and his reactions to the storm and how it affects those around him are poignant and bittersweet.

"Driftglass" by Samuel R. Delany (If, June 1967 - short story) 1968 Nebula Award finalist
4 Stars
I imagine that if Hemingway wrote sf, it would look something like this. The sf element of this story, that people are surgically modified to swim in the ocean, could probably be removed and you would still have a compelling tale of fishermen and the dangerous lives they lead and how it impacts their friends and families.

"The Fifth Head of Cerberus" by Gene Wolfe (Orbit 10, February 1972 - novella) 1973 Hugo Award finalist and 1973 Nebula Award finalist
5 Stars
"The Fifth Head of Cerberus" is the first section of the novel of the same name, published later in 1972; the novel consisting of three thematically linked novellas. The story is an autobiographical memoir of an unnamed narrator in which he looks back on his boyhood and youth on the Earth-like planet of Sainte Croix, and the events which led to his long, harsh incarceration, and eventual freedom. The narrator lived in seclusion in his "father's" mansion along with his brother, a robotic tutor named Mr Million, and assorted odd others. The father turned out to be conducting mysterious biological experiments while earning money from using the mansion as a brothel. It's a story full of complex character dynamics and fascinating world building.

"Particle Theory" by Edward Bryant (Analog, February 1977 - novelette) 1978 Nebula Award finalist
3 Stars
A middle-age journalist is going through his mid-life crisis when he's diagnosed with prostate cancer. He volunteers for an experimental treatment using subatomic particles instead of radiation or chemotherapy. At the same time, the heavens are lit up by several supernovae. What all of these threads have to do with each other is not entirely clear. The story serves mostly as a character study of the journalist.

"The Ugly Chickens" by Howard Waldrop (Universe 10, September 1980 - novelette) 1981 Nebula Award winner and 1981 Hugo Award finalist
2 Stars
Part tall tale, part encyclopedia entry, this lighthearted story recounts a modern biology student's hunt for living dodo birds in the wilds of the U.S. South. Not much meat on these bones.

"Going Under" by Jack Dann (Omni, September 1981 - short story) 1982 Nebula Award finalist
4 Stars
A time-traveling tourist visiting the Titanic falls in love with another time traveler, complicating their plans to live and die, respectively, on the ship. And then there's her father's head she keeps in a box to add weirdness to the proceedings.

"Salvador" by Lucius Shepard (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1984 - short story) 1985 Hugo Award finalist and 1985 Nebula Award finalist
3 Stars
This is mostly a character study of a soldier in a Central American war. He is like a lot of soldiers, tired and disillusioned. The sf element is in the form of drugs that the soldiers take to enhance their fighting abilities. Well written, but not my cup of tea.

"Pretty Boy Crossover" by Pat Cadigan (Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, January 1986 - short story) 1987 Nebula Award finalist
3 Stars
This story examines the ethical considerations of transferring one's memories and personality into a virtual simulation. Is it a utopia or is it a curse?

"The Winter Market" by William Gibson (Vancouver Magazine, November 1985 - novelette) 1987 Hugo Award finalist and 1987 Nebula Award finalist
4 Stars
In a world where actors' lucid dreams can be downloaded to computers and edited into movies, a senior editor becomes infatuated with a rising star, a woman who wears a bionic exoskeleton because of a congenital physical handicap that prevents her from moving normally. It's a strange and poignant cyberpunk love story.

"Chance" by Connie Willis (Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, May 1986 - novelette)
4 Stars
This story has all the hallmarks of Willis's romantic comedies, although this one is a bit more serious. The premise is that not only do large life decisions, such as picking an occupation or marrying someone, cause significant changes in one's life, but small, almost trivial things do, too. Our lives are ruled by chance encounters and seeming coincidences. There's really not much science fictional about this story other than the protagonist's dreamlike reminiscences and what-ifs that might or might not be real.

"The Edge of the World" by Michael Swanwick (Full Spectrum 2, April 1989 - short story) 1990 Hugo Award finalist
4 Stars
A trio of teenagers descend a "bottomless" cliff near a U.S. military base in the Middle East. Eventually, they find some ancient caves which supposedly have mystical powers, and one of them makes a surprising wish. An intriguing tale, and the ending raises many questions.

"Dori Bangs" by Bruce Sterling (Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, September 1989 - short story) 1990 Hugo Award finalist and 1990 Nebula Award finalist
4 Stars
A music critic and an underground comix artist find love in an alternate reality that extends into the then future of the 21st Century. It's a well written character study that is all the more poignant because the two never "really" meet.

[Godly Gadfly · Rating 2 out of 5]

A mixed bag 2.5/5

This tome is a large anthology containing more than 30 science fiction stories that were written from the mid-1930s to the mid-1990s. It's a companion to a similar collection of fantasy stories. The included stories range in length from short stories to novelettes and novellas. Each begins with a helpful overview from editor Gardner Dozois about the author and the story. A lot of the content is mediocre, and some of the stories contain profanity and immorality, so I can't give an unqualified recommendation for this collection. But it's still worthwhile picking out some of the better stories to read. I also found it helpful to get a basic overview of each story before reading it, because that can help overcome the opaqueness that will in some instances be a barrier to enjoying the story.

There aren't that many entries that I thoroughly enjoyed, but these are the ones I especially recommend:

"Aristotle and the Gun" (L. Sprague de Camp) is a fun novelette with a classic time travel theme. After his team successfully creates a time travel machine, the project is shut down, but that doesn't stop scientist Sherman Weaver going back in history on his own. He decides to go back to ancient Greece, in an effort to convince the famous philosopher Aristotle about the virtues of the scientific method. But living in the ancient world turns out to be much harder than he expected, and while his dialogue with Aristotle was profitable, when he returns to the modern day he discovers that things have changed for the worse as a result of his interference in the past.

"The Other Celia" (Theodore Sturgeon) is a short story that has well been described as a tale of aliens among us. The first character in the story, Slim Walsh, is somewhat of a voyeur, and enjoys learning the secret side of other residents in the house where he lives by spying on them. But the real interest quickly turns to Celia, about whom he notices something extremely unusual each night when she goes to her room.

"The Moon Moth" (Jack Vance) is a novelette and my favourite of the bunch. Newly arrived from Earth, Edwer Thissel is struggling to adjust to the culture on the planet Sirene, where the locals all wear masks and follow carefully prescribed social patterns, such as playing of music to accompany speech. Wearing his Moon Moth mask, Thissel is informed that an assassin has arrived on the planet. But after a body is found, and with three suspects all wearing masks that hide their true identities, how can Thissel find the culprit? This story is great purely on the level of murder mystery and detective story alone, but also gets us thinking about the public personas we all adopt as "masks".

"The Fifth Head of Cerberus" (Gene Wolfe) is a classic Gene Wolfe novella that I've long admired. The story is presented from the first person point of view of a narrator whose father denotes him as "Number Five". Things turn weird when his father begins subjecting him to strange experiments in the middle of the night, and our protagonist slowly comes to learn some disturbing truths about himself, his world, and his family. You'll make some remarkable discoveries in the closing stages, which will make you want to reread the entire story in a whole new light. Among other things this story addresses important themes such as post-colonialism and the nature of personal identity.

Less satisfying, but somewhat good in one way or another were the following:

"The Lady Margaret" (Keith Roberts) is a novelette that later became part of the larger novel "Pavane", an alternative history describing a world where England has lost the war against Spain and has entered an extended dark age under a repressive Catholic government. Jesse Strange is the driver of a steam-powered road-train that transports goods across the country, and the story has two sub-plots, one featuring his unrequited love for a waitress he meets in a hotel, and the other featuring a man from his past who is now a highwayman. It's very evocative in how it describes a love refused, and how he gets the better of his old highwayman friend when at attempt is made by robbers to seize his road-train. It's a pity it's marred by some sexual content and blasphemy.

"Driftglass" (Samuel R. Delaney) tells the story of an aquaman who was seriously injured after an underwater accident,and; now meets a young man about to undertake the same deadly mission. The enthusiasm of youth reminded me of young men going off to war, as seen from the perspective of a veteran.

"The Ugly Chickens" (Howard Waldrop) is a generally amusing novelette about a protagonist who is a graduate student with a passion for rare birds. He has a random encounter with someone on a bus, and learns that the now-extinct dodo may have survived on a farm in a remote part of the US. It reads like a detective story, as he undertakes a quest to find the truth of this tale.

"Pretty Boy Crossover" (Pat Cadigan) is a short story with a cyberpunk feel, about a youth at a bar who discovers that his friend Bobby has made the choice to cross over into digital form. The protagonist "Pretty Boy" is pushed to make the same decision, but is skeptical about how real the digital Bobby is, and eventually realizes something more important about humanity and himself.

"The Edge of the World" (Michael Swanwick) is a short story that follows three youths down an endless staircase at the edge of an alternate earth, where they reach a monastery where one's greatest desires can come true. The outcome and clever execution of their three wishes at the very end is what made this for me, despite some blemishes along the way.

These last five all made some kind of impression on me, but were middle of the road at best. The ones I'd recommend reading and savouring are "Aristotle and the Gun", "The Other Celia", "The Moon Moth", and "The Fifth Head of Cerberus".

[Zachary Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some poor editing in story selection and story order. Many stories are marginally science fiction at best. Often, stories very similar in style or subject mater are next to each other or only separated by one other story.
Despite the flaws, there are many gems in here. If you need something to pass the time, pick it up.

[Jim Mann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have hundreds of science fiction and fantasy anthologies on my bookshelves, and I usually read them — particularly the reprint anthologies — a bit at a time. I pick them up, read a few stories, then move on to another. But from time to time I decide to read one straight through. I did this with Gardner Dozois’ Modern Classics of Science Fiction.

Gardner Dozois was one of the field’s greatest editors, right up there with the likes of John W. Campbell and Horace Gold. His long stint as editor of Issac Asimov’s SF Magazine made it the best in the field, his Best of the Year series was the must-have best-of each year, and he also produced several original anthologies and quite a few reprint anthologies (some co-edited with Jack Dann and others with George Martin).

Since the 1940s and 1950s had been covered so extensively in other anthologies, he decided that “modern” in this case would begin in the late fifties, though he then broke his own rule to include a couple of earlier stories that he thought essential. Thus the book covers 1955 to 1989. He also decided to leave out stories that have been anthologized a lot, and, for space reasons, to limit himself to one novella (Gene Wolfe’s superb “The Fifth Head of Cerberus”). And finally, he said that many of his choices were based on how the stories impacted hm personally.

While I’d read more than half of these stories before, it was a pleasure to reread them, and it was also a pleasure to read those I was encountering for the first time. There are too many to name all of them, so I’ll just name a few of my very favorites:

“Aristotle and the Gun” by L. Sprague de Camp. This is a well thought out and engaging time travel creating a new future story, by one of the best at crafting that type of story.

“The Moon Moth” by Jack Vance. One of Vance’s best works, it’s set on a planet where people are always masked. Vance was one of the best at creating very different, but very well thought out societies and telling entertaining stories set in those societies.

“Mother Hutton’s Little Kittens” by Cordwainer Smith. What can I say: I’m a huge Cordwainer Smith fan, and this short story by him is one of his most memorable.

“The Fifth Head of Cerberus” by Gene Wolfe. This novella by Wolfe remains one of his best works. I’ve read it a number of times, and it continues to impress me each time I read it.

“The Barrow” by Ursula K. Le Guin. A Le Guin story I had not read before!

“Particle Theory” by Edward Bryant. Bryant was a great short story writer who seems almost forgotten, but his story certainly shows why he deserves more attention.

“The Ugly Chickens” by Howard Waldrop. And speaking of great short story writers, Waldrop also belongs n that group. This is his famous, and one of his very best, short stories.

“Chance” by Connie Willis. In his introduction to the story, Gardner noted that this story should have been included in any best of the year fiction anthologies, not just in SF ones, that it’s that good. And he’s right.

There are also good stories by Michael Swanwick, Edgar Pangborn (a story later incorporated into Davy), James Tiptree, Jr., R. A. Lafferty, Roger Zelazny, Jack Dann, John Kessel, and others. It’s a really impressive list.

In this introduction, Gardner notes that since his choices were personal, he’s sure that many readers would feel “why this story by X and not this other one” and “why isn’t a story by this author included.” I did feel that way. For example, while the Bruce Sterling story that was included, “Dory Bangs,” is certainly a fine story, I would have picked one of the Shaper/Mechanist stories. He lists a number of authors he’d liked to have included, and I agree that I would have liked to have seem stories by, among others, James Patrick Kelly, Fred Pohl, Kate Wilhelm, and Robert Silverberg. He doesn’t list Larry Niven, but a number of Niven’s stories from that period were important. And while he says he didn’t include any Harlan Ellison’s works since the key ones had been anthologized many times before, his works were so important in the 1960s and 1970s, I think the anthology would have been even better had it included one.

Overall, though, a great anthology. I also own his Modern Classics of Fantsy, and I’ll read that sometime soon.

[Ebenmaessiger · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Salvador," by Lucius Shepard (1984): 8
- Above all else, this reads like story from 1984, and not simply because of the Contra allusions, but more so for the half-reactionary anti-Reagan meandering at play here, the kind of knee-jerk ‘againstness’ here struggling to find a coherent ideological/narrative outlet, instead opting for ambiguity rather than directness. STORY: in an only slightly-altered timeline [depicting a much more concentrated (maybe?) American presence in El Salvador/”anti-communist” insurgencies throughout the Third World], a soldier, concurrently taking way too many hyper-combat-readiness drugs, maybe hallucinates / maybe actually finds his way into an in-between world, where a girl tells him to, effectively, bring the war home to Americans. In turn, he slaughters his regiment and returns home, and we leave the story on the cusp of him, likely, slaughtering some American civilians for these murky reasons. It works half-effectively as a hazy, what’s-happening play on the messiness of both America’s Cold War commitments, as well as on the toll that the nature of this cruel war has on the ones perpetrating it (although, in that line, in falls square in line with takes on SFF/genre lit, in which Vietnam and our country’s sundry sins are played out as, first and foremost, tragedies for us, rather than for those against whom these actions are committed). At the very least, it works much better at this angle than it does at all in the ‘depiction of battle or soldiers’ angle, case in point being DT, the menacing, jive talkin’ black commander of the group.

"This Moment of the Storm," by Roger Zelazny (1966): 9.5
- Reading Zelazny short fiction, you understand how revolutionary he must have appeared in the mid-60s. Not so much for his spry prose, although that is there—others had been playing at that move for a decade. Not so much for his coyness or misdirection—although that doesn’t make the wonderful one-two punch of “Why stopover, if you sleep most of the time between the stars? Think about it awhile, and I’ll tell you later if you’re right.” any less bemusing. No, it’s more for the extended AIMLESSNESS of his narrative. Much like “He Who Shapes,” we know there’s a story coming, although Zelazny (and us, eventually) is in no hurry to reach it, content to luxuriate in the world he’s crafted and deepen, rather than complicate our understanding of the same. As such, his fiction exudes a lived-in-ness near unequalled in mid-century sf. What is more, when that “story” then does appear, it might as well not even announce itself as such, being principally only a heightening or emotional reflection on the general sfnal dynamics already established. In the case of this story, no “story” as such, even appears. Instead, Zelazny just takes his characters, his world, and shakes it.

"The Fifth Head of Cerberus," by Gene Wolfe (1972): 7
- (NOTE: just about the original, 'Fifth Head' novella from Orbit 10): Strange that I’ve now several times heard that newcomers to Wolfe DEFINITELY should start with Cerberus rather than the more complex New Sun, as the former simply seems a slimmer volume of the self-same Wolfe-isms: ellipses, Easter eggs (both deep and banal), mid-tier Proust rip-off deep memory mining mixed with mid-tier Jamesian convoluted syntax thick description, small hints at much bigger events (the world-building he hides in the middle of paragraphs), hypnotic narrativization (how did we get from here to there? [this isn’t a good thing]), and meandering alluisivity. And it never works for me. In fact, it’s all a little embarrassing—as if his advocates, in their advocacy, are just un-self-consciously crying out “I didn’t get this at first and so it’s this is better than van Vogt.” Wolfe storyboards his shit, then, in its composition, consciously carves out a chasm in its emplotment— i.e. taking a to b to c to d to e, etc. plot and cutting out b through d—and hopes that the winks in their direction throughout will suffice, OR he just flat tells us at the end (and WHY exactly is Marsch an aborigine?!). I mean, take this snippet from a review of the novella (and this is one of the SMART reviewers!): “Setting this aside for the moment, here is my take away, as Joan Gordon suggests. In Gene Wolfe — I think in general in his works, and not just in this one story — it’s not about absolute understanding. It’s about living with uncertainty, and ambiguity.” Said reviewer goes on to basically acknowledge that he has no idea what’s happening, but that, surely, that MUST be the point and that, surely, that MUST mean this is the work that most elevates sf into “literature.” Drivel.

“Country of the Kind,” by Damon Knight (1956): 7.5
A mildly clumsy (allegory-wise; the prose is largely smooth and propulsive and withholding in an effective way [indeed, the best part: the sinister opening]) Harrison Bergeron template, in which the ambiguities complicating BOTH that story’s utopia and deficiencies are not so much flattened as they are repackaged cynically (although some of the nuance is still there [see the connection posited between art and destruction]) and with that darker conclusion. For me, a tad warmer over, but I don’t begrudge those feeling otherwise.

[Mark Isaak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dozois explains in his introduction that his criterion for his selection of these stories is that the stories were the best to him, the reader--that they must grab him, not let go, leave him changed. Dozois has won multiple editing awards by deserving them. The 26 stories in this collection may not all grab you as they did the editor, and they are not all comfortable reading, but they are all good to great.

[Michael Horvath · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection got me into reading SF heavily (as well as other anthologies by Dozois) after a long time of being away. Still my favorite SF collection.

[TheOriginalNikeGirl]

DNF (for now)

[Princessjay]

THE COUNTRY OF THE KIND. Damon Knight. 3 STARS. Much anthologized classic. A man condemned to pure living hell in a world where violence has been completely eradicated, via self-triggering seizures & horrific odor that warns others away. Yet violence begets art..

ARISTOTLE & THE GUN. L. Sprague de Camp. 2 STARS. A man with a plan to change history. Of course, the result was exactly the opposite. Instead of more advanced technology, the world whence he came never experienced scientific renaissance and remained under American Indian rule. Dry and uninteresting.

THE OTHER CELIA. Theodore Sturgeon. 5 STARS. Utterly compelling. Slim has a habit of sneaking into his fellow housemates' room to peek into their lives. Then he met Celia, whose room contained no distinctive details. He then began an intensive campaign to find out more, leading to discovery of ...what?

CASEY AGONISTES. Richard McKenna. 3 STARS. In a sick ward, the dying patients began to see a comic ape that clowned around to cheer them up, helped them to fight against heartless medical doctors and the dying of the light itself..

MOTHER HITTON's LITTUL KITTONS. Cordwainer Smith. 3.5 STARS. Classic SF story, set in his Instrumentality of Mankind world where animals are modded to become super-ultra versions of what they can be. Here, a specially modded species is secret weapon to defend a monstrous & rich planet.

THE MOON MOTH. Jack Vance. 4 STARS. Outsider to an insular, intricate culture story. Newcomer diplomat trying to catch an off-world assassin in a place where everyone wears masks and speak with instrument accompaniment for proper etiquette & emotional expression. Fascinating world. Story showing age in that no females were mentioned, and then only as slaves.

THE GOLDEN HORN. Edgar Pangborn. 3.5 STARS. Vivid story of a boy's journey to manhood in post-apocalyptic Dark-Ages future, an war between innate greed & innate goodness. The innocent mue & his ultimate fate made me cry.

THE LADY MARGARET. Keith Roberts.

THIS MOMENT OF THE STORM. Roger Zelazny.

NARROW VALLEY. R. A. Lafferty. 3 STARS. Another much anthologized classic, exploring rifts in space & time.

DRIFTGLASS. Samuel R. Delaney.

THE WORM THAT FLIES. Brian W. Aldiss.

THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS. Gene Wolfe.

NOBODY'S HOME. Joanna Russ.

HER SMOKE ROSE UP FOREVER. James Tiptree, Jr.

THE BARROW. Ursula K. LeGuin.

PARTICLE THEORY. Edward Bryant.

THE UGLY CHICKENS. Howard Waldrop.

GOING UNDER. Jack Dann.

SALVADOR. Lucius Shepard.

PRETTY BOY CROSSOVER. Pat Cadigan.

THE PURE PRODUCT. John Kessel.

THE WINTER MARKET. William Gibson.

CHANCE. Connie Willis.

THE EDGE OF THE WORLD. Michael Swanwick.

DORI BANGS. Bruce Sterling.

[Steve Carroll · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and somewhat idiosyncratic anthology. I was expecting this to be a collection of the consensus choices for best short fiction in the genre for the past 30 years (well, '60-'90, it's 20 years old at this point). But Dozois intentionally omits stories that have been frequently anthologized so you end up with a collection of the stories that were most affecting to Gardner. He has good taste so this isn't a big problem, but not all the stories were my cup of tea. Only skipped through two which is pretty good for a 650 page anthology. Favorites included The Ugly Chickens by Howard Waldrop, Connie Willis entry, Gene Wolfe's The Fifth Head of Cerberus, and Jack Vance's "The Moon Moth".

[Wizzard · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging collection of stories. Not every story commandingly grabbed my attention, but many did. Many of the stories gave me pause, a few even compelled me to re-read them right then and there. It is a collection of science fiction stories from the 1950's through the 90's. It is interesting to see how the themes and styles change over the years. A good, varied read of SF short stories.

[Tori]

2008- Read for sci-fi class. Hit and miss.