nougat37 reviewed on 12/28/2011

Helpful Score: 1

This is an anthology of short stories collected from the magazine "InterGalactic Medicine Show". Many of these stories have great concepts, such as dream travel, meeting with aliens, and human interaction (or lack of). When listening to the stories, however, I felt like many lacked a certain something that would make them enjoyable reads. In the audio version, there are brief interviews with the author at the end of each story that explains what they wrote about. The interviews gave me a better appreciation of each work, but didn't change my mind on how I felt about the work itself.

My favorites in this anthology were: Orson Scott Card's "Cheater", "Pretty Boy", and "A Young Man with Prospects, each of which explore human interaction and human thought; "Tabloid Reporter to the Stars" by Eric James Stone, which explores how the first meeting with an alien race might play out; "Hats Off" by David Lubar, which is just a short fun read; and "Respite" by Rachel Ann Dryden, which gets into the human psyche and how quickly emotions can change.

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