OMNI

``It's weird enough for me'' seems to have been editor Datlow's rather flexible criterion for admitting stories into this anthology, the second of a series of science-fiction collections featuring pieces that originally appeared in Omni magazine. Some, like SF veteran Frederik Pohl's tale of Mars, are classic SF. Others, like Richard Kadrey's ``Fire Catcher,'' about a pill- popping hacker manning the cyberspace front against the Soviet Union in WW III, rely more on a noir tone than on a scenario (which is just as well, since a noir tone has proved more durable than the Soviet Union). A few entries, like Kate Wilhelm's ``The Dragon Seed,'' are, as Datlow notes, just as likely to find their way into a non-SF anthology. With work by Greg Bear, Carol Emshwiller, Howard Waldrop, Roger Zelazny, and others.