Subject: Review: OTHERWERE edited by Laura Anne Gilman and Keith R. A. DeCandido

From: "Evelyn C Leeper" <[email-masked]>
Date: 31 Dec 1996 20:03:58 GMT

OTHERWERE edited by Laura Anne Gilman and Keith R. A. DeCandido
                   A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		    Copyright 1997 Evelyn C. Leeper

     What is clever once becomes tedious with repetition.  In other words,
somewhere between the story about the were-salmon and the were-Republican,
my eyes glazed over.

     There are fifteen stories in this anthology and a few are actually
reasonably good.  Had I read them in THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE
FICTION or ASIMOV'S, I would have thought them worthy entries there.  But
here they are diluted by the lesser stories to the point where they all seem
mediocre.  And it's not even that I tried to read them all in one sitting --
I read them over a period of a month, and that's *still* too close together.

     "Stories of transformation" go back a long way, and at least one story
here pays homage to that.  These early stories, however, emphasized the
mythic elements, and these were also carried forward into such relatively
modern stories as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  But most of the stories here
don't have that aspect.  Either the transformation is done for laughs, or it
is a transformation without meaning -- a person changes into an X because
that's what the plot calls for, not because X has some meaning.

     I am becoming increasingly disenchanted with theme anthologies.  In
addition to the repetitiveness, the requirement of filling a book with
stories on a single topic usually means that the quality level suffers.  If
anthologists feel they must have a theme to their anthologies, how about
something less restrictive, like stories whose fifth word is "grass" or
authors born in June?

%B      Otherwere
%E      Laura Anne Gilman
%E      Keith R. A. DeCandido
%C      New York
%D      September 1996
%I      Ace
%O      paperback, US$5.99
%G      ISBN 0-441-00363-X
%P      260pp

Evelyn C. Leeper    |  [email-masked]
+1 908 957 2070     |  http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824
"I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library."
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