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peterseanesq's review
5.0
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Lawrence Watt-Evans must be a nice man. His stories always seem to have an element of decency and niceness about them. They are invariably entertaining in a nice way. I found the stories in this collection to be uniformly entertaining.
Most of the stories are about Watt-Evans' perspective on parallel realities. In Watt-Evans' imagination, there are an infinity of possible worlds where things went in different directions in significant and not so significant ways. In an infinity of possibilities, the secret of travel between these realities is bound to be discovered over and over again, but the problem is that no one ever discovers a way of navigating realities. When a traveler leaves his reality, he is gone from that reality forever. It would take someone nice to see the drawback in this scenario. Sure the traveler gets adventure and things unimagined in his reality, but he gives up his home.
Many of the stories are a variation on this theme. "Why I Left Harry's All Night Hamburgers" considers this scenario and asks "is it worth it?" "Storm Troopers" raises the question of how certain the characters are that they are in their own reality? "The Drifter" plays with the idea of what might happen with just a little "sideways" push. "An Infinity of Karens" is a story of a hunt for a perfect love across infinite realities. "One Shot" plays with an alternate reality that is so close to our own, but so different. "New Worlds" is about the perfect business partnership that never happened.
Watt-Evans fills out the collection with some minor work, which remains entertaining. "Watching New York Melt" is more of a sketch than a story, but a nice demonstration of what a gifted short story writer can do with an idea. "Monster Kidnaps Girl at Mad Scientists Command" is very entertaining comedy about genetic engineering. There are also several stories about dragons because Watt-Evans really likes dragons.
In my opinion, the best story in the collection was the very surprising "The Final Folly of Captain Dancy," which shows how much entertainment can come from a twist on a caper story done extremely well.
This collection was an entertaining diversion. Nothing particularly memorable, but very fun.
Lawrence Watt-Evans must be a nice man. His stories always seem to have an element of decency and niceness about them. They are invariably entertaining in a nice way. I found the stories in this collection to be uniformly entertaining.
Most of the stories are about Watt-Evans' perspective on parallel realities. In Watt-Evans' imagination, there are an infinity of possible worlds where things went in different directions in significant and not so significant ways. In an infinity of possibilities, the secret of travel between these realities is bound to be discovered over and over again, but the problem is that no one ever discovers a way of navigating realities. When a traveler leaves his reality, he is gone from that reality forever. It would take someone nice to see the drawback in this scenario. Sure the traveler gets adventure and things unimagined in his reality, but he gives up his home.
Many of the stories are a variation on this theme. "Why I Left Harry's All Night Hamburgers" considers this scenario and asks "is it worth it?" "Storm Troopers" raises the question of how certain the characters are that they are in their own reality? "The Drifter" plays with the idea of what might happen with just a little "sideways" push. "An Infinity of Karens" is a story of a hunt for a perfect love across infinite realities. "One Shot" plays with an alternate reality that is so close to our own, but so different. "New Worlds" is about the perfect business partnership that never happened.
Watt-Evans fills out the collection with some minor work, which remains entertaining. "Watching New York Melt" is more of a sketch than a story, but a nice demonstration of what a gifted short story writer can do with an idea. "Monster Kidnaps Girl at Mad Scientists Command" is very entertaining comedy about genetic engineering. There are also several stories about dragons because Watt-Evans really likes dragons.
In my opinion, the best story in the collection was the very surprising "The Final Folly of Captain Dancy," which shows how much entertainment can come from a twist on a caper story done extremely well.
This collection was an entertaining diversion. Nothing particularly memorable, but very fun.
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