WORLDS NEAR AND FAR: Nine Stories of Science Fiction
By
Carr bills this collection as tending more toward fantasy than rational, mechanistic speculation, and he begins with a straight, rather literary ghost story -- Fritz Lieber's ""Four Ghosts From Hamlet"" -- and with Silverberg's slick ethnic humor on the exorcism of the interplanetary ""Dybbuk of Mazel Toy IV."" Most of the stories that follow could not be labeled fantasy in the usual (or even the sci-fi) sense, but they are a notch above average in sophistication: Raylyn Moore's ""If Something Begins"" is a portrait of urban alienation, with creeping automation only the nominal villain; R.A. Lafferty's ""One at a Time"" approaches reincarnation in a mood of gargantuan vulgarity that is balanced by the shimmering lightness of Kornbluth's ""Kazam Collects"" and the understated message of Gene Wolfe's ""Feather Tigers""; and the one original entry, Geo. Alec Effinger's ""Horse With One Leg"" is a must for anyone who has become disillusioned with soulful girl/horse romances. Cart's own ""They Live on Levels"" is a sort of technical tour de force -- as its subjects communicate on the topic of non-communication. All, but especially the Effinger, entertainments for the confident, perceptive reader.