COSMIC KALEIDOSCOPE

by Bob Shaw ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1977

Shaw is a perfectly okay sci-fi writer, but hardly of a status to warrant this collection. These ten stories are all competent workings-out of serviceable ideas; it is difficult to make any further claim for them. ""The Gioconda Caper"" is an irreverent chase involving a bootlegged Mona Lisa and a hitherto unknown invention of Leonardo da Vinci. ""Waltz of the Bodysnatchers"" combines a future variety of capital punishment with an ingenious three-way marital shell game. Elsewhere, a small-town voyeur tangles with a hungry entity from Someplace; an extraterrestrial gravy train neatly reverses the relationship of a rich girl and her ambitious boyfriend; a lonely rancher befriends a woman and infant fleeing from another ""standing wave."" of time into the ""Prime Present."" No matter what the vein--macabre, suspenseful, facetious--Shaw works it efficiently enough but without much style or thoroughness. Mediocre.

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1977

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1977

Categories: FICTION