From Publishers Weekly
What exactly Omni 's vision might be isn't clear in longtime fiction editor Datlow's terse introduction to this second anthology, nor does it become obvious in her curt prologues to these 13 stories, nor in the stories themselves. Published in Omni between 1985 and 1988, they range from work by such older hands as Robert Silverberg and Frederik Pohl, through Roger Zelazny and Carol Emshwiller to the likes of Lucius Shepard and Dan Simmons. Included are not only fantasy and science fiction but even mainstream (Kate Wilhelm's "The Dragon Seed" might fit better in Redbook Visions ). All the pieces are uniformly polished--even slick--and most are typical of their authors' work. Some have been published in single-author anthologies (the version of Greg Bear's "Dead Run" included here is superior to the longer one in his anthology Tangents ). A charmer is Howard Waldrop's "The Lions Are Asleep This Night," an example of his trademark offbeat, postmodern alternate histories. Shepard's poetic, intelligently written prose poem, "Pictures Made of Stones," takes place in a version of the gorgeous threatening jungle he often uses. The one Hugo winner, Zelazny's overrated "Permafrost," is, at best, clever. Still, this is a high-quality sampling of what the genre has to offer.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Robert Silverberg opens the anthology with the wry Against Babylon, which recounts the willing abduction by aliens of a firefighter's girlfriend during an L.A. inferno, and Roger Zelazny closes it with his superior, surrealistic Permafrost, set in a perpetually wintry world with a conscious computer as its caretaker. In between comes a broad range of imaginatively rendered themes, notably including war in Dan Simmons' chilling tale of a Vietnam transformed into an amusement park, and Martian exploration in Frederik Pohl's masterfully envisioned, grim Christmas carol (so to speak), Adeste Fideles. Although perhaps somewhat weaker than last year's collection (many selections are little more than thinly plotted vignettes), this one yet testifies to Omni's dedication to finely crafted prose. Carl Hays
