An exhaustive, and somewhat exhausting, compilation of all of Schmitz's short stories (and one...novel? novella? Longer piece, anyway). Each one, individually, ranged from good to very good - even the ones I disliked it was because they gave me unpleasant thrills rather than because they weren't interesting and well-done. But reading them one after another after another...Schmitz had a distinct style, and en masse it gets to be a bit much. It might be described as...I don't know, constant surprises? Anyone who's certain about something is probably wrong. Sometimes it's plots within plots within counterplots (the Programmed Army story is a good illustration of that). Sometimes it's that the POV character repeatedly discovers that what they know as fact...isn't (the New Mind one). And sometimes it's just a matter of the real answer being outside the range of what the characters had imagined as the limits (the last, longer piece). It's not a bad style, but reading take after take of that structure was rather tiring - so I may not have liked the later stories as much as they deserved. I might try this book again and read it piecemeal instead of straight through. It's also a huge book - over 500 pages - which may have contributed. ( )

James H Schmitz is sadly one of the forgotten authors of 60s science fiction (except for 'The Witches of Karres') and as part of his campaign to bring back 60s science fiction, Eric Flint took the opportunity to bring back into print all his stories. Earlier books in the series have done his Telzy Amberson and The Hub novels and in this collection, Flint and Gordon have collected together the rest, a rather hodgepodge selection of stories set all over time and space though some seem to be set in a future not-too-dissimilar to some of the Hub stories (including one that's almost a precursor to The Witches of Karres!), including a few that are present day standard crime novels thereby continuing that crossover that a lot of science fiction authors seem to have with crime novel writing.

If you know Schmitz as the rather humorous tone taken in his better known stories then most of these stories take a darker tone especially in the section entitled 'Dark Visions' - quite an eye-opener even on a reread. ( )

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Sample Chapters: http://webscriptions.net/chapters/0743435591/0743435591.htm

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/3145166 ( )