Arthurian fiction in general is steeped with awful fiction, and short story collections are a mixed bag. Let me simply say that I was left unimpressed - and often disgusted - by the stories in here. There are some good ones, but they are few and far between. (Do not be led astray by the pretty cover art! It is pretty, but that's almost all it has going for it)

We start with an icky poem by Jane Yolen; then a groanworthy Mercedes Lackey story "The Cup and the Cauldron" -- it stars girls and yes, has more Christian-pagan stuff if you're as sick of that as I am; an incoherent Andre Norton story "That Which Overfloweth"; Marion Zimmer Bradley's equally groanworthy feminist-Goddess-server "Chalice of Tears." We hit something far better in Diana L. Paxson's "Feast of the Fisher King," which is both well-written and entertaining, as well as being in play format; also Brad Strickland's enjoyable elf-fantasy-Arthurian story "Gift of Gilthiliad."

Then it's back into "groan" territory with Ilona Ouspenskaya's gypsy tale "Curse of the Romany," where you wonder what-the-heck-does-this-have-to-do-with-it? James S. Dorr's "Dagda" is pretty; Gene Wolfe's odd "Sailor who Sailed After the Sun" is another where you wonder what the relevance is; Lee Hoffman's indifferently-written western-fantasy "Water" takes a long time to get to the point, as does Alan Dean Foster's "What You See..." and Richard Gilliam's "Storyville, Tennessee" and Jeremiah Phipps' "Hell-Bent for Leather" (are you seeing a pattern of irrelevance here?)

Lisa Lepovetsky pens another icky poem; Orson Scott Card's "Atlantis" stretches indefinitely; Dean Wesley Smith's "Invisible Bars" is pretty amusing; Janny Wurts bores and annoys with "That Way Lies Camelot"; Kristine Katherine Rusch's "Hitchhiking across an Ancient Sea" is a pale, pale short story; Lawrence Watt-Evans's story has a good idea, but is poorly written; Lionel Fenn's "The Awful Truth in Arthur's Barrow" is just plain bizarre, as is Brian M. Thompson's "Reunion." Margo Skinner redeems the poetry angle with "Quest Now"; Neil Gaiman's "Chivalry" is enchanting; Bruce D. Arthurs is weird again in "Falling to the Edge of the End of the World", same with Rick Wilber's "Greggie's Cup."

As you can see, this mixed bag tends toward the dull, irrelevant, pretentious and just poorly written. Half the stories seem to have the Grail thrown in (if it's there at all) just as an afterthought. Except for Margo Skinner's poem, the poetry all stinks; only a few of the stories retain the beauty and prose that one espects to see in an Arthurian story. When I buy a book classified as Arthurian fiction, I WANT Arthurian fiction; I do not want stories about pregnant gypsies, fantasy westerns, or genies.

There are much better collections out there, however bright the bright spots in this are. Read "The Doom of Camelot" and the upcoming "Legends of the Pendragon" if you want good Arthurian short stories.

The Gaiman story in this collection is brilliant. There are other bright spots as well, particularly the contributions from Diana Paxson and Alan Dean Foster. Good, fun stuff.

I found this book at a used-book store in Wisconsin and bought it solely for one of its newer stories -- the original Ender's Game novella, by Orson Scott Card -- later turned into an award-winning novel. However, in reading the other stories, I found that some of the other stories are quite good. The authors are your basic sci-fi group -- Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, etc. -- and some newer ones, like Card. The stories themselves are good science fiction, if not particularly deep -- none of them really stick with you as 'great literature', some of them -- like the Asimov story -- have a gimmick that can carry the story well. Generally this is an anthology for those who are already fans of science fiction war stories -- a small population, but one who would enjoy this book.

This book presents us to several short stories written by MZB with her incredible imagination, showing many different worlds, going from Earth to Darkover. You can read one story telling about the renunciants organization(Darkover), another one is about Lythande (a blue star magician with a secret). In my opinion, the best short story in this book, is the one about the Centauru's Children - where having a baby is the same to a death sentence to the mother... Well everyone can decide what is the most interesting of the 15 short stories of this book and vote in it.

This is a dandy anthology presenting short works from excellent western writers of the past(L'Amour, John Jakes, Hamlin Garland and others) and the present (Elmer Kelton, James Reasoner, Bill Pronzini, Bill Crider and others). A nice selection of stories that displays the many facets of living, working and surviving in the old west.

I enjoyed this first book of the series, but not the second or third volumes. If you like cats and are thinking that these are going to be cute stories with the cats as the protagonists, you may or may not like this series. The cat doesn't always "win" and sometimes the stories in the series are only peripherally related to cats.

This book includes few horror stories, which may interest you. The stories in here are not much of a horror story, but more of a suspense. As the scenes reveal you will be anticipating for the story to go on, but you will find youself saying, "HUH? " -at least that's what i did. sureley this isn't a story written by Stephen King. But for those who are interested in horror itself, try it. Who knows if you will have a different opinion than me.

You don't really get the sense when reading "A Century of Mystery Stories 1980-1989" that these were the best short stories in the genre written during that particular decade. Rather, the book reads like these were the best stories the publishers could get the rights for. The husband and wife editing team of Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller are first rate mystery writers themselves (and each contribute one story to this collection), and they have come up with a few dandys. Loren Estlemen's "Greektown," for example, is among his best Amos Walker shorts, while Pronzini's own "Stacked Deck" may his best ever short story. Lawrence Block is rightfully included, though he produced many stories in the 1980s better than "As Good as the Rest," which was included. Several of the stories truly don't rank with the best, and at least one, Clark Howard's "The Dakar Run," barely qualifies as a mystery story.

At a mere 310 pages of text, the book is also far too short to cover an entire decade. Overall, this is a fairly undistinguished collection of shorts, despite the book's grandiose title.

Built around a liberal definition of frontiers, this anthology of original stories not only has stories about space exploration and life on harsh colony worlds but also stories about death and dreams and transformation. None of the stories break new ground, but most keep you entertained as they roam around old plots.

Two stories hold little interest. "The Cutting Edge" by Janet Pack handles the details of its technology plausibly and realistically, but, at this point in time, a story about using nanotechnology just to remove a brain tumor seems stale. "Home World" by Marc Bilgrey features the old story of a frontier couple threatened with the encroachment of the civilization they originally fled.

The vast bulk of the stories are entertaining examples of old ideas well done. It was nice to see geology, a little used science in science fiction, providing the clues to an alien artifact in Kathleen M. Massie-Ferch's "Traces". While conducting her researches, the heroine also has to avoid persecution by the theocratic government she lives under. It has already imprisoned her ex-husband for insisting man is not the universe's sole intelligence. Robert J. Sawyer's "Star Light, Star Bright" is one of those stories where the inhabitants of an artificial world, here a Dyson sphere, realize that man did not evolve there. Its charm derives from the clues they use to deduce this. The "Chauna" of Alan Dean Foster's similiarly titled story are mythic creatures inhabiting deep space, and a legendary inventor and mogul, enfeebled and dying, leads a resentful crew on a quest to find them. Terry D. England's "Out of the Cradle" was a fun, sometimes humorous story, about a connoisseur of death, or, more accurately, the pain involved in his elaborate, repeated suicides. His siblings wish he would put such adolescent activities behind and upload his mind to the TerraSphere, a virtual environment inhabited by most of humanity's intellects. He has other ideas, though. The frontier of dream research is the subject of Kristine Kathryn Rusch's "Dreamlike States". Its protagonist embarks on a disasterous project to synchronize his dream with those of his twin brother. Lawrence Watt-Evans' "The Last Bastion" reminded me a bit of Vernor Vinge's work, specifically A FIRE UPON THE DEEP. A coalition of human groups has to negotiate with the Link, a human-computer interface originally created by humanity and now at war with them. But both sides now need a peace because research by the Link has spawned new enemies for both. "Forgotten" by Peter Schweighofer doesn't try to rationalize its ending, but its main attraction is the study of those abandoned in nursing homes, here a futuristic one in orbit around a gas giant. Julie E Czerneda's "Down on the Farm" offers the unusual proposition of an agricultural boot camp through which all of a colony world's immigrants must go. They're annoyed by its stress on primitive, labor intensive methods, but, at story's end, hidden reasons for the camp are revealed.

Two adventure stories offer little novelty but still keep the pages turning: Andre Norton's "Set in Stone" and Robin Wayne Bailey's "Angel on the Outward Side". The Norton tale features a slave and his masters confronting, on an exploratory mission, an alien and hostile intelligence. Bailey's tale gives us a Shakespeare-quoting, android pacificst and his decidedly non-pacificistic partner, one of those mercenaries with a dead family and a whole lot of enemies who want his head. Here he meets an old love who hires him to find her lost sister. Nothing special in the plot pieces, but the team of North and Yoru were entertaining enough that I'd like to see them in other adventures.

The gem of the collection is Jane Lindskold's "Ruins of the Past". Full of plot surprises, good characterization, and humor at just the right moments, it tells of a woman desperately fleeing creditors who want to force her into lifetime indentured servitude. Hoping for quick cash, she climbs a mountain holding alien ruins at its summits, ruins which few return from. There an android waits to kill her. But the android has other needs, and a third presence lurks nearby.

With the exception of this Lindskold piece, this is collection of comfortably worn old plots well told. You won't be sorry you read it. But most of the stories won't stick in your mind either.

Future Net, by Martin H. Greenberg and Larry Sefriff is one of the strangest book I have ever read. As I read chapter after chapter, the stories were different from each other which gave me a twisting journey. This Novel took me though an off road ride with the world wide web of what you wouldn't expect. All the most weirdest things can happen when you interact with the net and when you don't realize that there are somethings out there haunting us. The stories went from talking aobut stock buyers to virueses, human chatters to alien chatters, and ghosts to possessed computers. Most of the exciting chapters will catch your imagination, however, I can't say that every story in this book was great. In my opinion, I recommend this book to all who love to serf the web or use internet because there are so many mysterious things going on in cyber space that you can't explain,yet can learn from. Hopefully, you can enjoy the interesting world of blind communication as I did in this book.

good book, many interesting stories. Lacks an atentiongeter