Inside the Funhouse: Seventeen Science Fiction Stories about Science Fiction

A number of the contributors to this anthology, including Frederick Pohl, Philip K. Dick and Isaac Asimov, are household SF names, and this anthology has its share of solid writing, yet it lacks the charm that should mark a collection of stories about writing--a favorite subject of writers and readers alike. Resnick ( Santiago ) particularly seems to relish tales that needle ``our so-called Modern Masters,'' like George Alec Effinger's whimsical piece in which established authors transport a quintet of up-and-coming SF writers back to 1954 and deposit them in the bodies of major-league baseball players of the time. The volume definitely has a humorous side, as displayed in Frank Ramirez's tale of a time traveler who visits Shakespeare in the past and gets a wholly unexpected glimpse of the future, with a blase Bard who has received all too many such inquisitive visitors. Yet the collection ends with a strain of bitterness, in Barry N. Malzberg's depiction of an author who, after churning out SF for three decades, is disillusioned with himself and dismayed that SF's ``power and mystery . . . had been drained by bad writing and editing, debased by a juvenile audience.'' (Aug.)