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Title: Beyond the Last Star: Stories from the Next Beginning by Sherwood Smith, Jeffry Dwight ISBN: 0966969855 Publisher: Sff Net Pub. Date: 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4.67

Rating: 5
Summary: A Good Read
Comment: Got this one as a Christmas gift...

The Premise of Beyond the Last Star is just that--our universe is gone, something else has replaced it. The "what" is left to the imagination of the editor and the twenty-five authors. Most of the stories involve non-human protagonists in some finely crafted stories, and some of them even contain fairly outstanding writing, to boot.

Worth mentioning are Beth Bernobich's short work about non-human interspecies love, Paul Bates' well-told-tale of how wolves got their religion, Brian Springer's wonderful yarn of robots seeking their roots at their own peril, Lawrence Connolly's adventure of an undersea people preparing their escape from a dying world while being stalked by an ancient evil, and Susan Kroupa's moving account of how music from this universe touches the lives of beings from the next.

A few are a bit long and drawn out for my taste, but most are crisp and to the point in a wealth of styles and possibilities. I highly recommend this collection, as well as the previous books in this series.

J. Feuer, Boston

Rating: 4
Summary: Borrowed, Will Buy
Comment: I borrowed this from a friend at Orycon.

Two days later, I want my own copy. What a variety pack! Old-fashioned science fiction with modern ideas and interesting characters are too hard to find these days, but I found them in the stories by Lawrence Fitzgerald, Justin Stanchfeld, David Levine, and a couple others. Science fiction humor in Christopher Rowe's story and the long one by Robert Roggoff. Science fiction folk tale style in the one by Paul Bates. Science fiction fantasy by Cheryth Baldry.

Really pretty stories by Kiel Stuart and Beth Bernobich.

But the weirdest one is by Lawrence Connolly. It alone is worth the price.

Rating: 5
Summary: Good range of Stories
Comment: I bought this hoping that Smith put a story in, and I was curious what kind of story she would pick. The stories are a broad spectrum, which is the sort of anthology I like. Most of them are very well written. Probably the best written is the one by Gregory Feeley, with Kiel Stuart's a close second. But for impact, I pick the Stuart, the Stanchfield, the Lake, and the Bicks. Best flash piece is by Andrew Burt. The Susan Kroupa story sneaks up on you. After two readings I tried to find more by this author. Same with the Beth Bernobich, with its poetic language, and the jazzy ending. Robert Rogoff's was not just unpredictable but funny. I was glad of the warning at the beginning of the Baldry because after reading a page I thought I knew just where it was going, but I was wrong.

In short, the anthology is recommended. You get a lot of good ideas and imagination for the price of a trade paperback.