The Emperor of Gondwanaland and Other Stories

The best of the 18 stories in Di Filippo's first nonthemed collection are both fun and unpredictable. Typically they pay homage to other authors, as in "Anselmo Merino," which puts a science-fictional spin on Herman Melville's Benito Cereno . In the idiosyncratic "Beyond Mao," co-written with Barry Malzberg, Chinese "taikonauts" venture into space. It would be pure Malzberg if it weren't half Di Filippo. In "Observable Things," Cotton Mather teams up with Robert E. Howard's fictional Puritan, Solomon Kane. "A Monument to After-Thought Unveiled" features an even more outlandish pairing—poet Robert Frost starts his career by writing horror fiction for Weird Tales magazine, edited by H.P. Lovecraft. The poignant title tale underlines the emotional importance of computers to lonely but imaginative individuals, while the amusing alternate world satire, "Shake It to the West," updates J.A. Mitchell's 1889 novel of America in decline, The Last American . Not every selection is a winner, but the versatile Di Filippo (The Steampunk Trilogy ) remains consistently inventive. (July 5)