A lengthy retrospective. Unlike the Broderick/Hartwell Centaurus this volume aims to cover a chronological range, and as such, isn't as strong, the earlier writers in general not being of the quality of Egan, McMullen, Williams, Sussex, etc. You aren't going to be too likely to run across Norma Hemming if you weren't around in the fifties to collect her at the time, for example. That is the limit of the remit of this book, being sub-titled 'A Fifty Year Collection'.
Russell Blackford contributes a several page essay on Australian SF history. Strangely his story here is a fantasy tale, rather than one of his strong cyberpunk pieces like Lucent Carbon, etc. Likewise with Petrina Smith's story, which is certainly nowhere in the class of Leanne Frahm's SF work (in fact the World Fantasy people picked the former, it appears).
So a couple of odd choices, but mostly does what it sets out to do, and is an extensive and welcome volume.
I'd call it a 4.25 rounded up for the introductory work.
Best ASF Writing : Infant Prodigy - Frank Bryning
Best ASF Writing : The Cage - A. Bertram Chandler
Best ASF Writing : Debt of Lassor - Norma Hemming
Best ASF Writing : The Doorway - Wynne Whiteford
Best ASF Writing : Parky - David Boutland
Best ASF Writing : All Laced Up - A. Bertram Chandler
Best ASF Writing : The Case of the Perjured Planet - John Baxter and Ron Smith
Best ASF Writing : There Is a Crooked Man - Jack Wodhams
Best ASF Writing : The Final Weapon - Damien Broderick
Best ASF Writing : Dancing Gerontius - Lee Harding
Best ASF Writing : The Man of Slow Feeling - Michael Wilding
Best ASF Writing : Re-deem the Time - David J. Lake
Best ASF Writing : In a Petri Dish Upstairs - George Turner
Best ASF Writing : The Chance - Peter Carey
Best ASF Writing : The Paradigm - Randal Flynn
Best ASF Writing : Inhabiting the Interspaces - Phillipa C. Maddern
Best ASF Writing : Odd Man Search - Cherry Wilder
Best ASF Writing : The Government in Exile - Paul Collins
Best ASF Writing : The Total Devotion Machine - Rosaleen Love
Best ASF Writing : The Caress - Greg Egan
Best ASF Writing : Red Ochre - Lucy Sussex
Best ASF Writing : The Soap Bubble - Sean Williams
Best ASF Writing : Angel Thing - Petrina Smith
Best ASF Writing : The Sword of God - Russell Blackford
Best ASF Writing : Niagara Falling - Jack Dann and Janeen Webb
Best ASF Writing : A Walk-On Part in the War - Stephen Dedman
Best ASF Writing : He Tried to Catch the Light - Terry Dowling
Best ASF Writing : The Boy Who Didn't Yearn - Margo Lanagan
Best ASF Writing : The Diamond Pit - Jack Dann
Best ASF Writing : Tower of Wings - Sean McMullen
ESP cat find.
3.5 out of 5
Prisons take brains.
3.5 out of 5
Rehab madness rerun.
3.5 out of 5
Transport oversight.
3 out of 5
We need your mind reader.
3.5 out of 5
Future woman's antique antics.
4 out of 5
Colonist coverup.
3 out of 5
Well of course super gorillas, etc., are tempting
3.5 out of 5
Gluon nuke shield disease shot slaughter.
4 out of 5
Year Day cull lead.
3.5 out of 5
Nerves of sloth.
4 out of 5
Space race wimpout = backwards people.
4.5 out of 5
Orbital-Earthworm relationships and differences with brainwashing meltdown muscular mayhem.
4 out of 5
Locals realise alien body changers worse than yanks.
3 out of 5
Play too long.
2.5 out of 5
Mouse woman takes living at work to an extreme.
4 out of 5
Armless alone.
3 out of 5
A government, thrown down in a revolution of the unemployed has a few live members left living in a fortress, and the Revolution Day holiday is coming. They commit violence while they still can, these few crazed survivors.
3.5 out of 5
Standover nannybot.
4 out of 5
An enhanced policeman gets entangled in a billionaire's bizarre Dr Moreau creations as art and save the child schemes.
4 out of 5
Post-war mutant Dreaming.
4 out of 5
Starship reality tv first contact special episode.
4.5 out of 5
No wing flee.
3 out of 5
The Queen of Palmyra's domain is being slowly strangled by Aurelian, Imperator of Rome and his sun god priests. She hires the blood-fueled mage Simeon Africanus to help her turn the tide.
4 out of 5
A couple must reconcile their new marriage relationship, both virtually and in reality, as well as their business situation.
3.5 out of 5
Odysseus smart, forward thinking. Paris, not so much.
3.5 out of 5
Dream delving religion.
4 out of 5
Bland helper.
2.5 out of 5
Downed pilots held in diamond mountain prison.
4 out of 5
Early Red Baron.
4.5 out of 5
4.5 out of 5
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