I am only half-way through this anthology but I could wait no longer to share my thoughts about this wonderful, new,(to me anyway),discovery!The horror/fantasy field has a hope for survival and his name is Peter Crowther!Actually I had heard of the author before because I read "Escardy Gap" when it first came out in pb and was pleasantly surprised-some of it's imagery has remained with me to this day.But since it was a collaboration,and I never noticed anything with the same name published, I thought it was a one shot and forgot about it... until...this past week I happened upon this collection and knew that the author's name sounded a chord somewhere in my memory.
Well,pardon me while I gush!I can't believe this was originally published in '84-and it's just now coming to my attention.The thing that makes Mr.Crowther so different is really his wonderful way of making me recall the stories i grew up reading by the masters of the "golden age":Bradbury,(of course),Matheson,

Beaumont,Sturgeon,Kuttner,Brown...but Crowther gives this nostalghia a twist of modern perversity-almost stomach-churning at times,but then subtly creepy at others.And I like the way he switches back and forth between American and British locales and idioms.
Please keep producing what "what nightmares are made of",as you do so well Mr. Crowther-I can't wait for the next ride-I would read anything you write-that's a testimonial!You have been gifted with the legacy of the masters!
R.Hewitt in Los Angeles

I will spare you the details. I will just say this: This is the finest collection of horror/fantasy stories that I have read! Incredible!

Coming out of RazorBlade Press, Hideous Progeny is one monstrously beautiful anthology that explores the world as it would have been if Dr. Victor Frankenstein's gruesome experiments had not gone awry. Writers such as Tim Lebbon, Peter Crowther, Steven Volk, Steve Rasnic Tem, and Rhys Hughes (to name just a few) each donate a small literary organ to the mix, and everything is skilfully stitched together into a marvellous book by first-time editor Brian Willis.

Cosmetically, the book is a two-face: while cover design by Chris Nurse is nothing short of outstanding, the internal layout is not without blemish. For example, outside margins are too wide, story titles are not always at the same height in the page, and the author's name is italicised in some but not all of the instances. Another gripe I have is that page numbers on the right-hand pages are left-aligned; plus, headers have no indication about the stories presented below them: these will give you a bad time if you want to riffle through the book to look up a specific something. There are a few extra typesetting warts and moles as well, as I noticed some characters showing up in a different size than the rest of the text, uneven spacing between words, typos derived from bad OCR, and so on. I sincerely encourage RazorBlade Press to pay more attention to internal design in the future, and run a few spell checks as well. Still, don't let appearances fool you, because the writing on these pages is top-notch.

In the whole, I was not in the least disappointed by Hideous Progeny while expecting quality work. Many short stories surprised me by their original angles, and all are very well written. The subjects are quite varied too, although some do overlap a little - it seems inevitable given the limitations inherent to their collective premise. I have my favourites, of course: Peter Crowther's piece is shocking yet touching at the same time, and the idea behind "Mad Jack" is a simple but nevertheless brilliant one. "The Banker of Ingolstadt" is perhaps the funniest in the book, and I found Steven Volk's "Blitzenstein" to rank among the best.

Whatever shortcomings the book has, they're quickly overwhelmed by the superb fiction it it, not to mention a downright gorgeous cover. For £6.99, it's well worth getting Hideous Progeny: not only will you be adding a fine specimen of a book to your library, you'll also be helping small press business to thrive. Because I want to see more from RazorBlade Press. Oh yeah.

In terms of the arts and sciences, Mars apparently has been a fad as it has appears in several movies last year, space probes have visited the red planet and now this anthology center on either a voyage to or surviving on the "Angry Red Planet". The films were fine, the probes fascinating, but this collection is fabulous. The sixteen strong tales are all but one brand new. The exception is a reprint from Ray Bradbury, perhaps one of the top two well known chroniclers of the planet. Each tale brings to life Mars though the contributions vastly differ in content. The book is worth reading for its entertainment value and comparing its scientific premises to the knowledge that the NASA probes have brought with its data and pictures from the fourth planet from the sun.

Harriet Klausner

Good mix of stories. Some funny, sad, enchanting. I didn't care for TEEL RULES/Mark Krieghbaum or ETERNITY'S GATE/Gary A. Braunbeck, but that's just me. Try it, it's nice to find a fantasy collection where just about all the stories are fine and readable.

Great idea to combine Fantasy & Romance! This is my favorite anthology for either genre to date. Every story is a gem, not one single story could have been omitted. They were all the best I've read since Mercedes Lackey stopped writing about Diana Tregarde Investigations, and Silhouette decided to end the Shadows line of books. I already crave a Dangerous Magic II anthology. Yvonne Jock's story is my favorite, I can certainly identify with a TV junkie with an active imagination! Enough said, this is a must-have for any fantasy or romance fan (or both).

I'm a guy and I wouldn't be caught dead reading a romance novel. But I do like fantasy so I picked this up for that reason. Surprised me that I enjoyed the stories by the romance writers just as much as from the fantasy writers. I figured maybe these were unusual stories, selected because they weren't typical for romance stories, but my girlfriend says no, that this is why she's been trying to get me to read romance stuff for the past couple of years. If the novels are anything like the stories in this anthology, then I'm going to have to start reading romance novels (with a book jacket on them of course.) My favorites in the collection are "Man of her Dreams" (T.Waggoner) and "Nine Tenths" (L.Hayden). How about a "DM2"?

I had seen this book at the library, and being a fan of Dante's Inferno, I checked it out. I was a bit disconcerted when I realized not all the stories take place in or near Hell, as the title suggests. Most of them occur here on Earth, where the characters are in a metaphorical hell. Surprise! Only a handful of the stories are worthy of note, including Gene Wolfe's and James Longrove's. The stories take place either in Hell, Chicago, or London. I found this last fact sometimes discouraging--i.e., I ended up skimming the story.

I recommend you get this book from the library before you spend the cash at a store.

Can't put it down. The intro promises that all the stories will be related to Dante's Inferno theme of Hellish portals on Earth, but they aren't all on that theme (in fact, one is a remake of the Christmas Carol). Scary and thought-provoking none-the-less.

I can't agree with the other reviewer. I found many of these stories scary precisely *because* they were based in metaphorical hells - hells we might actually live in, rather than encounter after death. Also, many stories were set in hells that were not on Earth but were also far from the fire-and-brimstone stereotype. The story "Office Space" alone makes this book worth buying.

I bought this collection for one reason and one reason only: it contained another slice of Ian McDonald's world-turned-upside-down 'Chaga; sequence. As it turned out this was by far the best piece in the book, but more of that later.

I haver never been convinced by Pater Hamilton, much as I want to like a British author who can do cyberpunk and do space opera with the best of the yanks. However his piece in this collection, 'Watching Trees Grow' changed my opinion of him. It is an alternative-history crime novella based on the premise that descendants of the Romans still rule Britian through a set of East India Company-style families who combine economic control with a monopolies over various areas of scientific progress. It is a neat idea, and takes the premise further than many other alternative histories by throwing the story further and further into the future, as an old rivalry becomes an obsession that almost transcends time.

I enjoyed it despite the episodic feel - perhaps a novel would have been more appropriate - but its 'Britishness' seemed slightly musty and old-fashionned, and redolent of dreams of Empire, in stark contrast to McDonald, or more overtly hip authors like Jeff Noon or Justina Robson. Maybe that was the point, and if so it was well made: science fiction is much the poorer if it doesn't teach you something about the society in which you live.

As for Stephen Baxter's 'Reality Dust': well, he does try, and he does keep churning them out, but this is so boring and so mainstream and so traditional. It is all done very competantly, but it is basically the kind of SF I enjoyed when I was a teenager, it isn't challenging in any way.

I was a little disappointed with Paul McAuley's novella, 'Making History', especially as he is one of my favourite writers. This was partly because at the heart of it was a very tedious old argument about the nature of history (great men versus social processes) which tended to intrude on the quite interesting story of the processs of war, defeat, reconciliation and the way history is written. Perhaps this was set up as part of the character of the historian to demonstrate his own flaws, but it didn't really convince. This is certainly not one of his best stories.

As I said at the start, I bought this collection for Ian McDonald's 'Tendeleo's Story'. I was certainly not disappointed by this one. McDonald is one of the few writers in the genre today who can combine real politics and a strongly compassionate and empathetic grasp of human nature. He is also a superb writer, able to portray setting and character in a vivid, dynamic and sensual way.

This novella, as the title suggests is the story of Kenyan girl, Tendeleo, the arrival of a extraterrestrial nanotech lifeform, the Chaga, that begins to transform Africa, and as a result the balance of global power. Initally for Tendeleo, however, this means growing up and simply trying to survive in the ferment that follows, which in her case means geting more and more deeply involved in street gangs smuggling Chaga material out of Africa. Capture and exile is never far away and whe it comes she loses here family in tragic and guilt-inducing circumstances. She winds up in cold, rainy Manchester, England, where she meets the other central character and narrative voice of the story, Sean, a black Irishman, who is also an exile in various ways, and a tentative love affair begins. Of course, inevitably Tendeleo has to return to Africa, where the Chaga has begun to revolutionise everyday life and the place of Africa in the world.

'Tendeleo's Story' is worth the price of this collection alone. It is an almost perfect example of how to write a novella that with none of the structural problems of the others in the book. The narrative is perfectly paced, with a deft handling of both action and emotion and no forced-ness or pretension. It is truly worthwhile and heartbreakingly real story that exist within an utterly fantastic and transforming world, yet a world which says so much about our own. A true gem of a story, from one of the best and most underrated writers around.

This volume is somewhat different than the usual flurry of anthologies that come out, especially during the holiday season, on two counts.

First, it is a British import, and thus the authors represented, while to varying degrees familiar to most of the rest of the world, really are British in tone and outlook.

Second, rather than stories, this volume has the longer novella form for the stories, and thus there is one story apiece. SF seems to be the last bastion of this "not quite short story, not quite novel" length work, and the virtues of the form are admirably displayed here.

The first story is Peter F. Hamilton's WATCHING TREES GROW. Although far better known for his Reality Dysfunction space opera, Hamilton has written detective SF before (The Mindstar Rising novels) and this is another example, with a twist...it is set in an alternate history where Heinleinian long-lived families vie for power and influence, and that is just the backdrop to a murder mystery.

The second story is REALITY DUST by Stephen Baxter. Unlike Hamilton, Baxter's story is set in his trademark universe, the "Xeelee Sequence". This is set after the Qax Domination, where their former collaborator-lackeys seek escape from the freed peoples of Earth in a rather unusual escape route.

MAKING HISTORY, by Paul McAuley is set in a more standard "near future" solar system, in the aftermath of a war...and even if it is true that history is written by the victors, that history can sometimes be rather muddled in the making.

The last story is TENDELEO'S STORY by Ian MacDonald. Like the Baxter, it is set in a trademark world of his, the "Chaga stories", where a strange alien life (nanotech? technolife?) has started to colonize the Earth, beginning with Africa. This story, like his other novels and stories, focuses more on the people affected by the Chaga, much more so than the actual event itself.

All four of these stories are strong, but of course, tastes may vary. The stories do range a far chunk of SF, and it is very possible that while you might like two or three, you may not like all four (personally, I liked the Baxter the best and the McDonald the least). Thus, the 4 star rating. Still, all in all, if you are at all interested in what the best British SF writers are doing, this paperback is perfect for the purpose.

Four novellas that are everything that is great about science fiction. These four authors are absolutely among the greatest voices in the genre today.

In WATCHING TREES GROW Peter Hamilton took history, turned it upside down, shook it a bit & gave us an alternate view of a history quite unlike anything I had ever read before.

Stephen Baxter's REALITY DUST made the reader look at reality in a whole new way.

In MAKING HISTORY, Paul McAuley showed how history is not always written by the victor.

Ian MacDonald's TENDELEO'S STORY took me back to the Chaga in EVOLUTION'S SHORE which always impressed me as being one of the most possibly real First Contact stories ever written.

All four novellas explore the very trait of our species' survival, adaptability, that brings hope & after all that's what science fiction is really about.

Ghost stories, in spite of their association with tales of terror (almost any scary tale told around a campfire is referred to as a "ghost story"), have lost much of their luster in the days since Poe and LeFanu. With the occasional exception of a work like Shirley Jackson's The Haunting or Stephen King's The Shining , few modern ghost and haunting stories are scary, and even fewer, frankly, are good. Peter Crowther, in his latest anthology, Taps and Sighs , has assembled a host of top-notch authors to reinvent the ghost story, and for the most part, he has succeeded.

Most of the authors in this anthology recognize that ghosts aren't that frightening in this day and age, so instead of an anthology of half-rate horror, this is actually a mixture of subtle horror and mythic fiction. Richard Christian Matheson and Michael Marshall Smith set the tone with the opening tales. Matheson's "City of Dreams" is a tale of horror, not because anything nasty happens to the protagonist, but because the best of intentions lead to true tragedy. And Smith's "Charms" is a touching (but not sentimental) tale of urban fantasy that could fit well among Charles de Lint's Newford tales.

Speaking of de Lint, he provides one of the two most pleasant surprises in the collection, as his "The Words that Remain," a twist on a classic urban legend, not only is sweet, but is a rare Newford tale that doesn't require the reader to be familiar with ten years of backstory. Setting the tale outside of Newford, and getting rid of the alternating first and third-person narration that had bogged down so many previous Newford tales has led to the most enjoyable de Lint story in ages.

The other surprise is Ray Garton's "The Homeless Couple," quite possibly the best piece of fiction Garton has ever written. Like de Lint, Garton's ending is utterly predictable, but the road he takes in getting there, and the parallel tragic lives of the protagonist (who morphs, over the course of 20 pages, from an unsympathetic archetype into a truly sympathetic hero). Garton, normally one of the best at telling novels of terror, makes a wonderful shift this time.

The actual tales of terror in this collection are no less impressive. The always-amazing Graham Joyce, in "Candia," provides his own nasty little tale of folks trapped in their own personal hells. Ian McDonald and Mark Morris take the same twist in two different, but equally horrific, directions. And Terry Lamsley's "His Very Own Spatchen" is a fun little tribute to the classic DC House of Mystery comics.

The cream of the horror crop is Gene Wolfe's "The Walking Sticks," a tale that presents as untrustworthy a narrator as in any Edgar Allan Poe tale. Wolfe's tale nicely mixes personal madness with ancient hauntings. Like Garton's story, expect to find this one reprinted in any number of "Year's Best" collections next year.

There are a few stumbling blocks. The McDonald and Morris stories, given their similarities, really should have been placed far apart, not next to each other. Ramsey Campbell's "Return Journey" is almost deliberately bad (the only horror being the reading experience itself), and Poppy Z. Brite's "Nailed," although completely readable, simply fails to break any new ground (a bit of a disappointment from such a consistently groundbreaking author). Still, Crowther (who contributes a very nice story with Tracy Knight) has assembled some great authors, and Taps and Sighs , added to his earlier Touch Wood and Dante's Disciples , establishes Crowther as one of today's top editors.

In Douglas E. Winter's introduction, he qoutes a poem about the sounds a ghost makes...tappin and sighing, hence the title. Like nearly all anthologies their are some good stories, some bad stories, some horrible stories and, gratefully, some top of the line stories. This collection is about 25% of each. The bad and horrible stories, however are outweighed by the good and great ones.

I found that I championed the more Twilight Zone/trick ending stories over the more experimental ones. An example of this is Thomas F. Monteleone's contribution, "The Prisoner's Tale, versus Graham Joyce's "Candia". Monteleone excellently delivers a straight ahead tale of one prisoner's chance at freedom. Joyce just delivers a confusing nonlateral tale of deja vu.

Poppy Z. Brite shows why she is a favorite among the horror sect in "Nailed". A revenge tale with some voodoo thrown in is precise and perfectly laid out and ended. In Ramsey Campbell's "Return Journey", we get a time travelling train that is convuluted and unclear.

Graham Masterton gives us a look at what happens to the past if you dare forget it in the terrific, "Spirits of the Age". ; scary as well as thought-provoking is Ray Garton's "The Homeless Couple" where a man who ignores cries for help from people in need in turns needs help. Ed Gorman's "Ghosts" is a tale of caution about reprucussions.

All in all a recommended collection of differring takes on ghost mythology.

Some good stories, some truly bad, but nothing really stands out. There's nothing really to say more than that, since it's an anthology--read the ones you like, skip the others. Some of the good ones--"White Lady's Grave" and the one about the Church and the dying businessman (can't remember title). The others were either okay or completely a waste of time, but having just read "The Earth Strikes Back", even the worst ones looked okay. I'm not sure if you'd want to spend your money on this--it's not that good, so why not borrow it from a library?

I don't read too many anthologies. Certainly, this one will only inspire a moderate amount of enthusiasm for me to go buy more.

It's published by White Wolf, which also is responsible for highly successful and intricately detailed RPGs such as Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse. (One of the weaker stories in the collection is by Steward von Allmen, who appears to be a key White Wolf founder.) I believe I picked this book up at GenCon; it's now out of print.

The anthology starts off very unpromisingly, with an embarrassing little number from beloved sci-fi/fantasy/horror fan Forrest J. Ackerman. This is the lowest point of the book, but luckily it rebounds from there. Ben Bova offers a story that has a perfect "Twilight Zone" twist, and Michael Moorcock tosses in an excursion to his Eternal Champion milieu in a tale that has a bit of an "English Patient" flavor to it. Ian McDonald in "The Time Garden" gives us an enchanting and lyrical exploration along the border of Faerie in a story that is reminiscent of the works of Robert Holdstock. (I believe, in fact, this may be why the basic Amazon review shown above claims that Holdstock is a contributor to the anthology, when in fact he is not.)

Jeremy Dyson's "City Deep" is another macabre tale with a dark cinematic flair such as would be found in one of the TV anthology shows. Two other stories are almost poetically elegant yet starkly simple: Charles de Lint's "Heartfires", about wandering Native American spirits losing their way in the present-day U.S., and Stephen Gallagher's "God's Bright Little Engine", with its beautiful and haunting ending. The story provided by Storm Constantine, "Blue Flame of a Candle", while not entirely successful, is nonetheless packed with intricate detail and manages to create a rich history with merely a few suggestions.

Other stories are much less powerful. The joint effort by Kathe Koja and Barry Malzberg is frankly unreadable, while that of Larry Bond and Chris Carlson is at best workmanlike and much more suited for a military-themed collection. Other stories are plain silly or sadly bland. The one by William F. Buckley (!) can only be considered an interesting experiment. Ian Watson's "The Amber Room" never comes together, and Christopher Fowler's "Tales of Britannica Castle" reads like a pointless pastiche of "Gormenghast".

While there is indeed good material to be found here, the lesser works really drag down the overall level of quality. A few of them should just have been jettisoned to save the rest.

Still, this is a suitable sampler for some authors who are rarely seen, and it definitely shows that some, such as Gallagher and McDonald, are worth following.

After a few chapters, it became a chore to finish this book. I prefer hard sci fi novels, and I only found about a third of these short stories to be interesting. Many of the stories had too much fantasy for my tastes. Of the few stories that I did enjoy such as those by Baxter and McAuley, they really were too short on details and elaboration, but I did get a taste of the authors' styles and I think it is worthwhile to see what other novels they may have written.

I just finished Moon Shots. It's an intriguing selection of fiction ranging from the more hard-core scientific to light fantasy, each story, of course, dealing in some fashion with the Moon. I read collections like these as introductions to writers I may not have otherwise heard about, and while some of the stories appealed to me more than others, overall I found this book pleasant reading late at night just before falling asleep... It's a great little book for someone whose tastes in fiction are varied and who may not have time to sit down through an entire novel. Good for a traveler or student with some interest or fascination with Luna.