The American Beauty
In these 10 stories, Hugo-winner Steele shows as much imagination and wit at lesser length as he does at novel length. "Agape among the Robots" is an amiable satire on human relationships as translated by robots. "Green Acres" offers more satire in an alternate-history setting in which marijuana is legal and hemp is also valuable as the source of substitutes for plastic. The shared-world story "Graceland" introduces rock 'n' roll to Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld. "Warning, Warning" is a homage to the venerable, ambivalently cherished old TV showLost in Space, while "Tom Swift and His Humongous Mechanical Dude" gives a satirical nod to the world of the Tom Swift Jr. juvenile sf novels of many a baby-boomer's fond memory. Also noteworthy is an entry in Steele's passionate alternate recent history in which space exploration continued, "A Walk across Mars," set during the joint Russian-American expedition of 1976. In all, a solid set, with not a mediocre, let alone dumb, piece in it.Roland GreenCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved