Beyond the Sun

Drawing on the skills of a diverse assortment of women and men, from luminaries to the justly obscure, Schmidt has assembled a blandly inclusive anthology whose stories have but two points in common: some form of interstellar setting and an oddly archaic sensibility. Jamie Todd Rubin's "Flipping the Switch" is a story of twin-paradox-facilitated workaholic alienation. Mike Resnick's labored "Observation Post" attempts comedy about cultural misunderstandings. Although many of the stories, like Jean Johnson's "Parker's Paradise" and Simon C. Larter's "Inner Sphere Blues," are quite recent, they share the dated ideas of such venerable stories as Robert Silverberg's Disco-Era "The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV." Similarly, the Resnick could have come from any moment in his nearly half-century-long career. Schmidt has inadvertently provided a handy example of the essentially nostalgic variety of SF. (Aug.)