APPROACHING OBLIVION

Eleven stories by one of SF's wild men, including a neo-Nazi nightmare, a moving view of a man meeting himself as a child, a jazz-playing Orpheus of sorts, a remarkable melange of machinery and intrafamily passion, a variation on the earth's last minutes reminiscent of the conclusion of Clarke's Childhood's End, a curious tale of everyone's beloved who loves himself best, and so on. Ellison has a wacked-out power -- more compelling than appealing.