I bought the Sword & Laser anthology ages ago after reading the Press Start To Play sci-fi anthology and stumbling upon this in my amazon recomended purchases.
The first half of the book is dedicated to Fantasy fiction, or the Sword section. The latter is the Laser section, dedicated to sci-fi stories.
Rather than rate every single story, I thought i'd simply just say how I got on with the book. The introduction by Tom Merritt details his experience from past anthologies, and how useful they are at helping emerging writing talent break into the mainstream, whilst also being a haven for quite simply, naff stories to get into print. Hence deciding to compile this anthology of fantasy and science fiction stories. He blatantly states that not every story will be everyones taste, and whilst this is probably true I found there wasn't a story I didn't enjoy or find interesting at least on some level.
The stories cross a variety of genres; experimenting with time travel, big monsters, space travel, humor, sea creatures and so on. There were some of the stories which started me of thinking 'this really isn't for me' but I'd definitely stay stick with them, as persuing led me to find some of the more enjoyable stories in an unlikely (for me at least) tale.
It's always nice discovering new authors, and a good anthology is a great way to do it en masse, and thanks to the time and thought put in by Merritt and Belmont, the selection here is all of high quality and fans of science fiction and fantasy are bound to find at least something that appeals to them. Recommended.
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