Rejiggering the Thingamajig and Other Stories

Stone's first collection offers 25 SF stories ranging from the earnest but mediocre "The Man Who Moved the Moon" to the spectacularly dismal "The Greatest Science Fiction Story Ever Written." In the title story, a na%C3%AFve traveler discovers the dreadful secret behind the galaxy-spanning teleportation network. In the Nebula-winning "That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made," an interstellar Mormon missionary is presented with simplistic, contrived moral quandaries whose resolution is never really in doubt. The morality tales are broken up with the occasional attempt at humor, like the dire "The Six Billion Dollar Colon," and traditional problem-solving tales like "The Day the Music Died." Stone's style is familiar to fans of 1950s and 1960s SF magazines--an association emphasized by Analog Science Fiction and Fact editor Stanley Schmidt's introductory essay--but readers under 50 may find it hard going. (Sept.)