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5.0 out of 5 stars
Speculative Stories from the City that Never Sleeps, May 22 2004
Take a trip down Broadway as you've never seen it! This themed anthology series contains 25 different visions of the Big Apple. Visions of the city as it will be, as it may be now in the dark corners and mysterious alleys, and, as it never was. Lawrence Watt-Evans has collected a wide variety of stories from to create an anthology that takes readers from Central Park to the Upper East Side, to Chinatown and Wall Street.The collection has a decent balance of stories, from the patently absurd, to the deadly serious; SF, fantasy and horror are all well represented. Unfortunately my least favorite story is also the first in the anthology. An off-the-wall pun-fest from Piers Anthony, Cloister is a bit too ludicrous for my taste, and a poor choice for a kick off story for this collection, as it is misleading in setting the overall tone of the anthology. I strongly recommend readers skip Cloister (unless you like some seriously painful puns) and open with Getting Real by Susan Shwartz, which is my particular favorite story in the entire anthology. Overall, this anthology is brimming with good picks: Getting Real takes readers down into the subways, and the shadow life of Temps. Wild Thing by Eric Blackburn is an out and out horror story of the ancient terrors that can lurk in Central Park. The Baby Track by Howard Mettelmark is a short-short with a hysterical take on an infant on the fast track to success. Slow Burn in Alphabettown by S. N. Lewitt looks at a future NYC with a big trash problem. Fans of Michael Resnick's STALKING THE UNICORN will recognize the alternate NYC in Post Time in Pink, where Resnick revisits his characters in yet another strange adventure. There are more than enough good stories to outshine the less spectacular fare. I was not thrilled with the somewhat pedestrian The Cleanest Block in Town by Janet Asimov, and, as I mentioned, found Cloister to be painful to read. Perhaps the most glaring fact is that NEWER YORK was published in 1991, and so is out of date by more than ten years. Long before 9/11 happened and altered the cityscape of Manhattan--therefore the futures rendered in this anthology cannot reflect on those events. Nevertheless, it is a commendable collection and I'm grateful to Lawrence Watt-Evans for putting this book together. Readers who are fans of themed anthologies should also check out the anthologies edited by Martin Greenberg and Andre Norton for some other excellent reading material. Happy Reading ^_^ Shanshad
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