THE BEST FROM ORBIT: Volumes 1--10

Selections from Knight's editorial correspondence serve as both running commentary on these 31 sf ""bests"" and a capsule history of Orbit. Some of those represented: Joanna Russ (chicly cryptic), R. A. Lafferty (raffishly elusive), Kate Wilhelm (solid), Harlan Ellison (one Grand Guignol idiocy, one wistful exploration of the meeting-yourself-in-time theme), Gene Wolfe (a grim variant on the child's fantasy that merges into the real world). Knight's bias, more concentrated in this creme de la creme than in the annual Orbits, is toward the evocative and--sometimes maddeningly--elliptical, with much free-floating invention.