KIRKUS REVIEW
Engdahl expresses the hope that these previously unpublished stories--some by writers not usually associated with the genre--will break out of the sci-fi mold. Sad to say, they don't even do justice to it, and the five novella-length tales often read like fictionalized sociological debates. Rick Roberson's ""Astoria Incident"", about cultural conflict between the crew of a spaceship and an isolated colony of extraplanetary frontiersman, at least succeeds on that level, while Shirley Rousseau Murphy's clumsy attempt at ethereal fantasy is loaded down with ""tremblings"" and ""quickened pulses"" and ""spurts"" of first one emotion and then the other. Between these poles, three variations on the familiar themes of thought projection (here called ""educing""), personality engineering, and time travel are journeymen entertainments--perhaps as solid as one has the right to expect from a collection of commissioned originals, but a disappointment to anyone familiar with Engdahl and Roberson's more far-sighted Universe Ahead (1975).