Very interesting compliation of shortstories. The stories are well written except for the overwhelming use of profane language. The use of vulgar language in the stories by the writers seemed to take most of the enjoyment of reading away for me. Seems to me other, more suitable, words could have been used. The book is profane!

I'll keep it short and sweet. This is a compilation of shortstories that appeared in Asimov's magazine. The stories were readable and some even enjoyable. The one thing that bothered me is the fact that in almost every story the werewolves were very civilized and always turned into actual wolves. Now as a fan of werewolves I dont find that to much of a turn off excvept for the fact that its fun to somtimes read a story were the werewolf is some huge beastly creature that is preying on inocent people and the main char. are just trying to survive or kill it. The one story in this book that didnt turn our shapeshifting friends into the normal woodland creature ( Two Bad Dogs) was so poorly writen and so completley BAD that i could have writen better when i was 16. If you can find this book cheap or just really love werewolves like i do then go ahead and pick it up.

The latest anthology reprints from the Asimov magazine centers on werewolves and as expected from that illustrious publication the stores are all great. The time frames vary adding to the depth of the mix. The stories take readers seemingly everywhere. One tale involves a Viking visit to the new world before Columbus. Another centers on a wild ride on the Orient Express in the nineteenth century. The 1950's South hosts a story. The American Western frontier provides the backdrop for a firth tale. Finally, the remaining entries take the audience on a weird trip in modern times. Each tale holds in common two things: werewolves are a featured character(s) and all six are excellent tales.

Several of the tales are award winners, but all deserved recognition. Fans of horror short stories and anyone who relishes a werewolf tale with a bite will gain much pleasure from this collection that lives up to the Asimov label.

Harriet Klausner

This is not a book you would want your children to read! The short stories are inspired by modern-day, Frankenstein-like concepts (most having nothing to do with the movie or book characters) and there are explicit sexual scenes and references: pleasure robots, AIDS, rape, fisting, etc. Most of the stories are disgusting; I would not recommend them to anyone.

While some of the stories in this book are pretty good, most of them are just writing exercises by writers slumming in a collection. The Vonnegut story is dull and the cyberpunk story isn't anything new. Most of the other stories are either sequels to the book (which has the monster even more miserable than he was at the end of the novel) or to the movie (which are more fun just because the movies were more fun)

It's a short book and not terribly bad, but it's not altogether satisfying either.

A well-crafted compilation of tales; a good deal more discriminating than most monster/horror collections (because less material on Frankenstein's monster?). A great many of these stories are literature - some poignant, sentimental, mostly tragic and some actually scary; just like the myth that was their mother. The Vonnegut peice, "Fortitude" is a short play. While more simple in its statement and language than the other pieces, is fast and sharp on irony. "Monster of the Midway" is a short funny piece in a nontraditional arrangement, amusing even if you don't like football. "Pity the Monsters" has its pitiful and frightening moments. And Brian Aldiss' "Summertime was Nearly Over" almost made me cry. The creature that is the protoganist of Aldiss' story is achingly intelligent and well-spoken. But I think my favorite was "Creature on the Couch" despite its sudden and ambigous ending. It's funny and charming while being somewhat suspenseful, and maybe a little shocking as you re-read the ending again...

I have just one question for Mr. Gordon: does he find that condescension and old-fashioned ridicule really works in convincing people to abandon their beliefs? I find it hard to imagine but like so many Promethean debunkers out there, they must, as a group, collectively believe it does, for why else do they rely on it with such regularity? It's not that Channeling Into The New Age isn't a relatively entertaining and highly readable work, it's just that I found Gordon's demeaning personality and arrogance tiresome and juvenile. I know he believes he's only attempting to save the ignorant and superstitious masses from themselves-a commendable goal to be sure-but I can't help but believe he's not into debunking more for the sheer enjoyment it brings him. To refute Gordon's work topic by topic would take some time; suffice is to say he takes the New Age "gurus"-and Miss MacLaine in particular-to task on a number of issues, from channeling and the use of crystals to reincarnation and UFOs, all of which has been done before and since by better writers. There simply was nothing new in any of this. While I found myself agreeing on a few points, most of it was just another litany of insults (he especially enjoys working the words "nonsense" and "gullible" into every other paragraph) with little meat on them. His status as an outsider puts him at a great disadvantage; much like trying to attack Roman Catholicism without once stepping foot inside a church or making any effort to understand it's precepts within the context of its own history, it just can't be done on anything more than a superficial level. The New Age movement cannot be attacked the way one would take on an established religion, for it has no set doctrines or dogmas that one must adhere to. The entire idea behind it is that one is free to explore their own spirituality as they wish and pick and choose those elements that speak for them, while ignoring other ideas that do not. I really don't think Henry understands that, preferring to attack it en masse as one would, say, Mormonism. For example, he castigates reincarnation without, I think, really bothering to try and understand it. In one instance, he rejects more enlightened interpretations of how karma works-that as an "educational" element designed to encourage spiritual growth-by declaring that that isn't how it has been traditionally taught (as though ancient concepts can't be refined and rethought over time.) In this and other areas, Gordon talks at great lengths about things of which he knows little, dismisses entire concepts out of hand as "nonsense," again without taking much time to discuss their merits or weaknesses, and generally dismisses all psychics and parapsychologists as con artists, fruitcakes, or-at best-well-meaning but seriously deluded quacks. Of course, Gordon saves his most voracious attacks for Miss MacLaine, whom he seems to admire even while attempting to humiliate her. Not a huge fan of the actress/New Age guru myself, I still felt his efforts to attack her beliefs to be mean-spirited and juvenile. Instead of confronting her philosophy on rational/logical grounds, he instead devotes whole chapters to listing various remarks she has made and then writing some cute rebuttal designed, I suppose, to enlighten us to the dangers her statements represent. While Gordon makes a few good points and does us some service, I guess, in making us aware of the potential pitfalls and dangers the New Age movement-and Shirley MacLaine in general-represent, the general tone of the book is that of a bratty schoolkid who snickers at others who aren't as smart as he imagines himself to be. Good try, but there are better books out there.

Shirley MacLaine, while talented as an actress, has certainly made a name for herself. She's made some of the most absurd statements in history, especially that we are all God. Comforting, huh? And, because she's a public figure, she's known to have made them. I mean, it's not like "my sister's friend's cousin told my uncle..." i.e., scuttlebutt. And she's written it! People actually buy her books on her communication with the great beyond. And they pay a fortune for her seminars; the book refers to an estimate of $4 million she grosses from one of her tours.

Has Shirley toned down? It's irrelevant to the book which was written in the late 1980s.

Overall I like the structure of the book. The author attempts to define the "New Age" and describe its motives. I think there's more to be said than he does about that "New Age," but he adds a shade or two to it that I hadn't thought off, notably that its tendency to provide quick and easy answers is a sign of our times. He then covers many of Shirley's statements, and those of other gurus, e.g., J.Z. Knight, channeler of Ramtha, whose words of the wisdom of some 35,000 years ago I long for to guide me through these troubled times. He even covers WHY belief in such nonsense is dangerous--and that's something many of the books do little of.

And MacLaine reveals an irony: The author refers to her liberal political action, e.g., her participation in McGovern's campaign (1972) and her opposition to the Vietnam Warm. But I see her New Age pronouncements as the ultimate in conservatism: Your condition you brought to yourself (karma, or a dozen other concepts depending on the country/religion). That must be comforting to her and to the people who pay her thousands for a weekend seminar on how to be no less than God.

Gordon reviews many of MacLaine's statements. And they speak--or don't speak--for themselves. People who complain of the cynical nature of the book need only read those utterly meaningless statements. And one of the final chapters is on the crossover between science and the mystical. Shirley, for example, frequently nonquotes Albert Einstein. She, like that other guru not covered in the book, Deepak Chopra, frequently refers to "quantum" physics--while laughably understanding NOTHING about the subject. However, the sardonic nature of the text makes it more appropriate to those already skeptical of MacLaine and other such gurus. While I'm not confident that a more reasoned, scientific, or even educational text will convince those who believe in MacLaine's absurdities to reject or at least challenge them, it may help us all argue more effectively with those who do subscribe to her flatulence.

The book is fun, but not one I would use for a course, say, in critical thinking.

After reading and enjoying Wandering Stars in its original published version many years ago, I was really looking forward to reading this sequel. However, I found that it did not live up to the promise of its predecessor.

Most of the stories were fantasy, rather than science fiction, and I'm not particularly fond of that genre. It was a definite letdown.

I enjoy science fiction short stories and I enjoy stories with a Jewish view, so this seemed like a perfect collection for me. It was. I found it interesting to see what these different writers, from Woody Allen to Isac Bashevis Singer and Harlan Ellison, came up with for a Jewish sci-fi story. As with any story collection some are better than others. Some basic knowledge of Judaism and Jewish history helps to understand some of the stories.

This collection of short stories constitutes a perfect illustration of the problem with Asimov: the man wrote millions of words in his life, but many of them weren't worth the effort. I've always enjoyed the Black Widower mystery stories, but in this fifth collection of those stories we learn that Asimov has pretty much run out of good ideas. So he publishes bad ones instead. I've read "Encyclopedia Brown" stories that were based on more clever plot twists than some of the stories in this book.

The Black Widowers meet once a month at the Milano Restaurant (notice that they take the task of host in rotation). Each month the host brings a guest for grilling, beginning with the question 'How do you justify your existence?' and ending with ferreting out some mystery to be solved. The seventh Black Widower - Henry, the waiter - always solves the problem after the other six have cleared the ground a bit. The problem often isn't a crime - just some little puzzle that's been driving the guest crazy. This volume has an unusual number of spy stories, though.

I personally find the by-play between the Black Widowers entertaining in itself. For instance, Rubin can be counted upon to severely libel another writer of his acquaintance, one Isaac Asimov, a few times in every volume. :)

"The Fourth Homonym" - Host: Trumbull. Guest: Nicholas Brant, lawyer. A long-ago client named one of his children to head the family business with his dying breath - but only the word 'to' could be understood.

"Unique Is Where You Find It" - Host: Rubin. Guest: Horace Rubin, Rubin's nephew, a doctoral candidate in chemistry who has been issued a challenge by a hostile member of his committee: "I'm thinking of the name of a unique element."

"The Lucky Piece" - Host: Drake. Guest: Albert Silverstein, novelty store owner. A boy lost his lucky piece in a resort sitting-room - where it vanished into thin air.

"Triple Devil" - Host: Gonzalo. Guest: Benjamin Manfred, self-made man. Manfred had inherited a single book of his choosing from the old man's library, with only an enigmatic phrase as a clue to the correct choice.

"Sunset on the Water" - Host: Avalon. Guest: Chester Dunhill, a historian whose heart's desire is to own _The Historians' History of the World_. Someone has finally answered his advertisement, offering a copy for sale - but Dunhill threw the envelope away, so the only remaining clue to the writer's address is the text of the letter itself.

"Where Is He?" - Host: Halsted. Guest: Bradford Hume, after-dinner speaker. Hume was hired for a taping session - but the cameraman, 'Old Reliable', didn't appear.

"The Old Purse" - Host: Trumbull. Guest: William Teller. Why was his wife's old purse stolen, only for all the contents to be returned anonymously, without the purse itself?

"The Quiet Place" - Host: Rubin. Guest: Theodore Jarvik, Rubin's editor. The only clue Jarvik had to the identity of the man he met at the quiet resort was that he used the nom de guerre 'Dark Horse'.

"The Four-Leaf Clover" - Host: Drake. Guest: Alexander Mountjoy, college president. Several faculty members were taken hostage recently by terrorists, and one of them betrayed a fellow hostage (a spy). The spy left one enigmatic clue to the identity of the traitor...

"The Envelope" - Host: Gonzalo. Guest: Francis MacShannon, one-time collector of postmarks, which once led to his part in the capture of a spy.

"The Alibi" - Host: Avalon. Guest: Leonard Koenig, retired from counterintelligence. How did Koenig find the hole in a traitor's cover story?

"The Recipe" - Host: Halsted. Guest: Myron Dynast. In this locked-room mystery, his wife's blueberry muffin recipe was stolen during the only afternoon when she had it in written form - but she never left the kitchen.

The short stories herein fall into 3 categories: Black Widower mysteries (15), Union Club mysteries (9), and miscellaneous (7). The Black Widower mysteries are a cross-section of the first 4 Black Widower short story collections, while the Union Club mysteries can be found in _The Union Club Mysteries_.

Many of Asimov's mysteries resemble crossword puzzles, in that they have only one "correct" solution - and have about as much believable characterization, with the exception of some recurring characters when considered over time.

I'll begin with the miscellaneous stories, although they appear last in the book. While some feature recurring characters who have been collected elsewhere, others are one-shot efforts written around a single gimmick for a magazine, and haven't been collected much.

"The Key", the 4th Wendell Urth story, turns on Jennings, a former student of Urth's who as the story opens faces lonely death on the Moon as the price of protecting an alien artifact; Urth afterwards seems the best chance of working out Jennings' only clue to the hiding-place. [The story suffers from dying-clue syndrome: an obscure clue left by a dying man that stumps people with *far* more time to consider it.]

Professor Neddring hands "A Problem of Numbers" to Hal, his graduate student and would-be son-in-law, to hear how Hal's mind works before Neddring will give his blessing. [Come on - an advisor who's known a student long enough for the romantic entanglement to occur ought to know Hal well enough at *this* late date, but passing judgement based on analyzing a *cryptogram*???] The puzzle resembles that used in "Unique Is Where You Find It" in _Puzzles of the Black Widowers_.

Clara and Hester, killing time together on a hot day, agree that it's "The Little Things" they can't stand. In Clara's case, her upstairs neighbour isn't answering her door, and the sound of a dripping faucet is driving Clara to distraction. But Mrs. Maclauren didn't mention any trip to Hester, who normally looks after her plants if she's away...

In "Halloween", an idealist stole some plutonium to prove a point about weak security, then died in a freak accident, leaving only a single dying word to reveal its location.

Two of Asimov's mysteries featuring Larry - a detective's teenage son, a la Encyclopedia Brown - appear. In "The Thirteenth Day of Christmas", there's been a bomb threat against the Soviet delegation to the UN for Christmas Day - but Christmas came and went without incident. In "The Key Word", Larry's father has a _New York Times_ crossword puzzle as a clue on an important case.

"Nothing Might Happen" is the only non-puzzle story in this book, having been written for the non-puzzle-based _Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine_. Sam Gelderman endures life as his quirky author uncle secretary by keeping his future inheritance in mind. True, his uncle might well outlive him, but Sam could *never* hope to pull off a perfect murder.

The Black Widowers stories compensate somewhat for the character development issue. Being based on real-life members of Asimov's own friends in the Trap Door Spiders, the club members' characters over the course of many stories have developed some personality. However, their guests - and the people their guests' problems involve - *do* often suffer from weak/implausible characterization.

"The Obvious Factor", "The Pointing Finger", "Out of Sight", and "Yankee Doodle Went to Town" are 4 of the 12 stories comprising _Tales of the Black Widowers_ - but not the first four, or those most significant to the club members themselves.

"Quicker Than the Eye", "The Three Numbers", and "The One and Only East" appear in _More Tales of the Black Widowers_.

"The Cross of Lorraine", "The Next Day", "What Time Is It?", and "Middle Name" appear in _Casebook of the Black Widowers_.

"Sixty Million Trillion Combinations", "The Good Samaritan", "Can You Prove It?" and "The Redhead" appear in _Banquets of the Black Widowers_. "The Good Samaritan" lets Asimov have a little fun with the Widowers by introducing a female guest to the sacred precincts, while "The Redhead" is based on a dream Asimov had.

Asimov's Union Club stories, like the Black Widower stories, involve several club members who bat around a problem before the resident genius solves the problem. The 9 (out of 30-odd) UC stories selected for this collection were: "He Wasn't There", "Hide and Seek", "Dollars and Cents", "The Sign", "Getting the Combination", "The Library Book", "Never Out of Sight", "The Magic Umbrella", and "The Speck". Again like the BW stories, the UC stories are based around 1-gimmick puzzles; however, I find them less appealing. The UC members don't have the friendly (though argumentative) relationship of the BWs, and Griswold is the antithesis of his gentle BW counterpart, Henry: abrasively arrogant where Henry is self-effacing. Also, there's a sameness to the UC stories: Griswold is *always* the puzzle-setter, reminiscing about long ago issues, so they're not really worked out by reasoning in real-time; the other UC members try and fail to reason out the puzzle, then nag Griswold into revealing the answer.

So, it may not be the best story ever written, but it does carry on the Asimov Robots storyline. If you can quote the three laws of robotics, you gotta read this whole series. It will not knock your socks off or anything, but you will enjoy it.

...why buy this when you can get it in other Asimov books, along with many of his other excellent stories? This short story, which can be equally enjoyed by adults and children alike (and is a good way to introduce members of the latter category into the genre), while certainly a classic of the science fiction field, is widely available in several different anthologies. For example, you can read it in Asimov's monumental collection, The Complete Stories, Volume 1. I do highly recommend you read this story; but, if you're going to, you might as well purchase it in an omnibus, where you can read other stories of his as well. That said, if you want to own this particular story by itself - which is a good idea, actually, if you're planning on handing it to children, as it is small and lavishly illustrated - or if you are an Asimov completist (God rest your tortured soul) - then you will want to pick this nifty and hard-to-find item.

OK to read if you need a couple of hours of escape. Written in the same first person singular style we're all used to. Rehashes several old plot lines. Are robots human? Are the three laws mutable? How about robot sex? Please don't forget the super aliens. Maybe it's me, but did I spend too much time exposed to hyperspace for this to stick in my mind as memorable

In this third book of the Norby series, Space Cadet Jeff and his robot Norby locate a planet populated by humans who had been transplanted from Earth millennia ago. They rescue a young princess trapped on another planet who has been changed into a plant. The next book in the series is "Norby and the Invaders." The two books were later reissued together as "Norby: Robot for Hire."