Amazon Review
Bear works best on a large canvas, and the short story is not his ideal medium--he can carve monumental figures out of mountainsides but is less skilful whittling cherrystones. Nonetheless, there's much here that is interesting to the fan and non-fan alike. For example, this volume includes the original short story out of which Bear's classic, imaginative and deeply spooky novel Blood Music was developed; if the story isn't as powerful as the novel that's only what we'd expect. Certainly as a story it works well, and won both Hugo and Nebula awards. The title story of the collection is another double-winner, and is hauntingly suggestive: it combines a version of Alan Turing with a neat little story about extra-dimensional physics that works efficiently as a tutor in topographical mathematics. Other stories manage varying degrees of control; Sleepside Story, a kind of urban fairy tale, leaves the reader thinking that Bear is better suited to Hard SF after all. Similarly The Dead Run--which was turned into a Twilight Zone episode--is fair enough in a sub-Stephen King sort of way, with its premise of blacklisted truckers driving condemned souls down to Hell in their rigs (and its arresting first sentence: "There aren't many hitchhikers on the road to Hell"). But too few of the stories here trade in the grandeur and wonder of Bear's best, big-scale work. --Adam Roberts