5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Stil great!, November 2, 1998
By A Customer
I'm going to briefly review the individual stories since it's an anthology. Don't worry I'm going to try to give little away.
Silverberg's story was not to my taste and it became part of his novel "The Alien Years".
Second Skin was a great example of spy story sf once I warmed up to it, my advice don't judge this story till you're done.
Nancy Kress is perhaps the best sf short fiction author of the '90's, & as always her story does a great job of being both genuinely human and science fictional.
Reasons to be Cheerful is disturbing, I wish I'd never read it.
Moon six has it all, but for some reason it's a hair shy of being one of my favorites in this collection. It is very good though.
Bill Johnson won a Hugo for his story about an unusual small town and that pleases me since I disike bleak urban sf. My only complaint is that the story seemed to lead itself to a sequel or ,perhaps, novel too strongly.
Escape Route had technobabble, starship captains, and aliens without seeming like a Star Trek ripoff. It is pretty good.
James P. Kelly's story was nice, but for some reason I didn't "buy" it.
A Spy in Europa is an entertaining mixture of hard sf, Jame Bond, and Jaws.
The Undiscovered was probably the best alternate history story of its year. I'm glad the author afterward was included because it's one of my favorite parts of the story.
ECHOES is sad and hopeful, science fictional yet human, it's wonderful & surprise it's buy a TV writer!
I wish I had read Marusek's stuff earlier because I liked his story about a device "Getting to Know You".
"Balinese Dancer" was a weird feminist? story.
Like many Robert Reed stories "Marrow" is so excellent I'm surprised the guy has never won a major award. However like many Reed stories it's somewhat unnerving so maybe that's the answer.
"Heart of Whitenesse" is one of those Waldrop stories I just don't get.
Swanwick's story was a pretty good far future story, but swanwick sort of turns me off.
I think I have a much more negative view of the future described in "Pipes of Pan" than the author does, but otherwise it is an intriguing piece of biological and cultural speculation.
Croosing Chao Meng fu was a well done adventure with rock climbing, yep Joel and Crow ROCK CLIMBING.
Yeyuka was a good self sacrifice story, but cold like most Egan.
Frost Painting had nice imagery, but was too New Age involved for me.
Lethe was nicely moody & poetic, but a bit confusing.
Winter fire is probably unusual for Landis in that it's too depresssing for me and is about a future Bosnia-type war.
Nevermore was too graphic a love story for me.
Open Veins was an interesting "Hitchcockian?" near future story.
Not entirely to my taste, but "After Kerry" is one of the most emotionally powerful sf stories I've ever read.
The Masque of Agamemnon is like a star trek episode, but I like Star Trek episodes so I liked it.
Gulliver at Home seemed sort-of forced and artificial yet I found it's outer vs. inner space debate interesting.
A Cold Dry Cradle is a fairly realistic story about a trip to Mars, but I'm glad exotic Martian life was in it to make it interesting.
My favorite stories were Second Skin, Echoes, And Marrow. It seemed like there were more adventure stories than usual, but surprisingly they were some of the best. In conclusion despite a few strange omissions and inclusions it is a great anthology.
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