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pjonsson's review
3.0
This book is not a novel but a collection of short stories edited by Hank Davis. It is a quite enjoyable book to read. The stories are rather varying, some of them are quite old, some are quite good and some are not so good. Some of them are good because they are good, others are good, or at least enjoyable to read, because of their age and the quaint way the future and space travel are described. One story describes faster than light travel as “standing still while the rotating universe travels around you” for instance.
As you might deduce from the title and the book blurb these are all horror stories. Some of them are perhaps not so much what we would call horror stories today but most of them are I would say. The foreword is almost a story in itself and quite nice reading. It is perhaps not the best book I have read but I found it quite enjoyable. It reminded me a bit about the old Hitchcock Presents or Twilight Zone episodes.
As you might deduce from the title and the book blurb these are all horror stories. Some of them are perhaps not so much what we would call horror stories today but most of them are I would say. The foreword is almost a story in itself and quite nice reading. It is perhaps not the best book I have read but I found it quite enjoyable. It reminded me a bit about the old Hitchcock Presents or Twilight Zone episodes.
jlaney's review
4.0
I overall liked this, since even the stories that started out a little slow ended with me wanting more of the world they were in. The editor's note was entertaining, but played up the horror aspect a bit. They aren't necessarily all that scary. Some weren't horror so much as thriller. That's fine, though. They were still good. I especially liked A Walk In The Dark by Arthur C. Clarke, Mongoose by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, and Visiting Shadow by the editor, Hank Davis. I only had any real issues with two:
An off-putting thing kept happening in the second story, Frog Water by Tony Daniel. Brand names kept getting thrown in with slight alterations, followed by "or something/whatever," seemingly unnecessarily. For Example:
It doesn't seem like much, but in a short story, when it pops up that frequently it's distracting. I thought maybe it was to avoid copyright, but then Play-Doh and Sponge Bob are straight up mentioned, so then I thought maybe it had to do with what a kid that age would remember since the narrorator is 11 and has been away from home for a year. Whatever the reason, it put me off and out of the story but even then, the setting was interesting and the ending was still enjoyable.
The only one I'm not really fond of at all was the last one, Sandkings by GRRM, because not only did it not really fit with the other stories to me, (he has a hover car and it's not set on earth but it's otherwise very mundane..?) the main character was fairly flat. He's just egotistical and cold blooded without anything added that makes him interesting. He doesn't feel or think about anything he does, really, and not in a "wow, look how cold and calculating this person is" sort of way, either. (This spoiler is not detailed as to exactly how things happen, but mentions the outcome.) Despite liking the little details of the end, he was just. so. boring. (This spoiler tag mentions other characters involved, but not anything about them.) It felt like it was more like it was added because of the author's name than anything.
An off-putting thing kept happening in the second story, Frog Water by Tony Daniel. Brand names kept getting thrown in with slight alterations, followed by "or something/whatever," seemingly unnecessarily. For Example:
"...some old mouthwash she found under the bathroom cabinet, Tangerine or Listerane or something, I can’t remember."
"We always got Something Springs Water, something like that."
"...in Pet Mart or whatever that place was called."
It doesn't seem like much, but in a short story, when it pops up that frequently it's distracting. I thought maybe it was to avoid copyright, but then Play-Doh and Sponge Bob are straight up mentioned, so then I thought maybe it had to do with what a kid that age would remember since the narrorator is 11 and has been away from home for a year. Whatever the reason, it put me off and out of the story but even then, the setting was interesting and the ending was still enjoyable.
The only one I'm not really fond of at all was the last one, Sandkings by GRRM, because not only did it not really fit with the other stories to me, (he has a hover car and it's not set on earth but it's otherwise very mundane..?) the main character was fairly flat. He's just egotistical and cold blooded without anything added that makes him interesting. He doesn't feel or think about anything he does, really, and not in a "wow, look how cold and calculating this person is" sort of way, either. (This spoiler is not detailed as to exactly how things happen, but mentions the outcome.) Despite liking the little details of the end,
Spoiler
even watching him get his just desserts wasn't all that fun, becauseSpoiler
I would have rather have read a story about Jala Wo and Shade, to be honest.bent's review
4.0
I would say this book contained stories of various quality, but they were all good. It's just that the last story, "Sandkings" was really good. Not all of them are really horror stories but the first and last definitely fit the bill. A fun read.
librarimans's review
4.0
A solid collection of scifi/horror short stories. The George RR Martin one at the end was especially good.
jlsjlsjls's review
4.0
A fun collection of horror-slanted science fiction stories, some of them old familiar favourites and some of them new to me.
Not sure why the Goodreads description says Hallowe'en-themed as it's not nor is the H-word mentioned anywhere on or in the book. We'll chalk that up to somebody hired to write bookseller copy (the same description is in Amazon) with no genre-knowledge qualificiations whatsoever.
Not sure why the Goodreads description says Hallowe'en-themed as it's not nor is the H-word mentioned anywhere on or in the book. We'll chalk that up to somebody hired to write bookseller copy (the same description is in Amazon) with no genre-knowledge qualificiations whatsoever.
leons1701's review
3.0
A quite diverse collection of SF "horror" ranging from the pulps to fairly recent. A couple of gems, particularly G.R.R. Martin's "Sandkings", which used to be the work that always showed up in his about the author blurbs before "Game of Thrones". No real losers, all the stories here are worth the time to read them, if not always particularly horrific. A bit surprised "Who Goes There" didn't make the collection, but then, that's been reprinted a million times and it's nice to see some less well known stories. Not sure I agree with the horror tag on some of these, but they all come close enough.
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