STARRY MESSENGER: The Best of Galileo

A dozen very decent stories from the pages of Galileo magazine, with one that's a good deal more than that: a superior hackle-raiser by veteran Brian Aldiss--the matter-of-factly narrated confrontation between a cold, uncaring woman and her dotty widower father, a paranoid Mr. Peepers teetering on the verge of madness. The other big-name entry here is Harlan Ellison's lyrical but rather confusing homage to jazz guitarist Django Rheinhardt, and among the remaining ten there's energy and variety: two comic encounters (hippie hitchhiker-meets alien-hunter; outer-space tourist meets Earth), two time-travels (with intergalactic gladiators), a psychic, a brain transplant, two man vs. monkey parables. . .plus yet another reworking of that overworked theme, the power of music (by Alan Dean Foster). Except for the Aldiss, no fireworks--but generally solid work, and a good forum for promising newcomers.