UNIVERSE 12

by Terry--Ed. Carr ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 18, 1982

Mixed themes and modes: nine new fantasy/sf stories ranging from the competent to the inconsequential. Best of the bunch: Nancy Kress takes an adolescent identity crisis and turns it into a genuinely eerie, thought-provoking probe into the nature of sanity and reality; George Turner offers a professionally crisp, involving yarn concerning esp research and designer genes; and there's Bruce McAllister's visionary if overwrought tale (where a strong Tiptree influence is evident) about a lonely wife and her spaceman-husband's alien offspring. The rest: a characteristically weird R. A. Lafferty piece on ghostly alien thieves; an elegant but undramatic fantasy featuring John Bunyan and Izaak Walton (by Howard Waldrop); a Martian vignette from Kim Stanley Robinson; a slice-of-life drama aboard an orbiting space colony by Leigh Kennedy; and a couple of real duds involving video disk epitaphs and a misguided sorcerer. Overall--a plodding, about-average addition to an increasingly predictable series.

Pub Date: June 18, 1982

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1982

Categories: FICTION