ISAAC ASIMOV PRESENTS:

Roger Zelazny appears with two winners: What happens when an electronic demigod defies a living planet for the lives of a man and a woman—and how an intelligence hidden in the world’s computers and secretly manipulating the lives of billions is challenged by the only woman who knows how to defeat it…

Orson Scott Card records the life of an orphaned teenager who can kill with a thought…

Harlan Ellison presents the guardian of the talisman that keeps the world from ending—who is getting very old and tired…

Ursula K. Le Guin tells of a little girl lost in the wilderness encountering talking animals that Disney never dreamed of…

Frederik Pohl tells about the moments after nuclear exchange…

Greg Bear introduces a child prodigy whose music has charms that reach into other dimensions…

And more!

As with The New Hugo Winners, this is a volume of nine stories: three winners in the three short fiction categories for 1986 through 1988. None are by Asimov, whose participation was pretty minimal anyway, and several are really, really good. Unfortunately, there are several which are either (I feel) not quite so good (e.g., Robert Silverberg’s “Gilgamesh in the Outback”) or very good but not at all my cup of tea (Ursula K. LeGuin’s “Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight”), so I’d be just as happy not having to reread the volume.