From Publishers Weekly
This new collection from the editor of The Year's Best Science Fiction and Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine generally lives up to its billing. Deliberately avoiding oft-anthologized stories, Dozois serves up a wide variety of SF from 1955 to 1989, offered here chronologically and ranging from the disturbing settings characteristic of Damon Knight, Richard McKenna and Ursula K. Le Guin, to touching character studies from Samuel R. Delaney, Roger Zelazny and Connie Willis, to the complex futures of James Tiptree Jr., Pat Cadigan and William Gibson. A highlight is Jack Vance's brilliant tale of alien anthropology, "The Moon Moth." The collection's weak link is Keith Roberts's "The Lady Margaret," which moves too slowly toward an uninteresting climax. Readers might enjoy Bruce Sterling's "Dori Bangs," but only if they're familiar with rock critic Lester Bangs and with cartoonist Dori Seda. Dozois's introductions tend toward hyperbole (many contributors are labeled "giants" or "masters"). Also included are tales by L. Sprague de Camp, Cordwainer Smith, Theodore Sturgeon, R. A. Lafferty, Gene Wolfe, Joanna Russ and eight others. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Book Description
Brian Aldiss
William Gibson
R.A. Lafferty
Ursula K. Le Guin
Lucius Shepard
Bruce Sterling
Theodore Sturgeon
Howard Waldrop
Connie Willis
Gene Wolfe
Roger Zelazny

"The best stories are timeless. Long years from now the stories here may still touch someone, cause that person to blink, and put the book down for a second, and stare off through the hallow air, and shirver in wonder."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Tastes being as subjective as they are, I can't claim that these are the best science fiction stories of the last four decades, but certainly it is safe to say that they are among the best, at the very least. There is not a story in this book that i wouldn't buy today, if it were somehow crossing my desk for the first time, not even the oldest story here, which will be thirty-eight years old by the time you read these words. Long years from now, long after everyone in this anthology or involved with it have gone to dust, the stories here may still touch someone, and cause that person touched to blink, and put the book down for a second, and stare off through the hollow air, and shiver in wonder.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly