STAINLESS STEEL VISIONS

Thirteen tales, including one that's previously unpublished, spanning the nearly 40-year career of this Dublin-resident American writer/editor/artist—though the theme or basis for selection (if any) isn't clear. The best of the bunch: in a humorous vein, an interstellar repairman must fix a galactic navigation beacon that alien natives have appropriated as their high temple; an injured water-breathing alien dies in a peasant village on the Adriatic coast, ironically within just a few miles of modern medical treatment and scientific expertise; and a well-dramatized, cogently argued yarn discusses the hidden dangers of eugenics. Also on the agenda: magazines that cruelly target the elderly, toys as a spur to research, military ideology, a spinoff from the Deathworld series, Stonehenge, printing, religion as a destructive force, alien contact, the story of the novel of the movie Soylent Green, and a new yarn featuring Harrison's most famous creation, the picaresque Stainless Steel Rat. Middling entertainment, with an agreeable host.