5 out of 5

A fascinating anthology about ‘culture clash,’ with a sci-fi bent.  We love anthologies, but they require keen editorial oversight: generally it helps to have some kind of binding theme, but within that, you also need to allow for enough variation and creativity to get your creators’ best work and to keep your readers interested.  Another common problem with genre anthologies (science fiction, horror) is that they tend to fall into Future Shocks / Eerie-type zingers, in which the last panels put a twist on things, and this tends to bore when it becomes the norm.

C. Spike Trotman’s oversight on this set of 24 tales, 300+ pages, is downright perfect: every single story has some element of one culture (or more) intermingling with another, and they’re all focused enough to have a sense of beginning, middle, and end, even when they’re more experimental.  By the same token, we get stories that lean more toward humor, or drama, or, yes, some twists, but in every case, the tone or style feels right for that creator’s (or creators, if it’s a writer and artist) offering, and the sequencing is staggered such that you never know what exactly the next story will be, except that it will be interesting.  Indeed, whether by good fortune or selectiveness, every entry is worth reading, and occasionally rereading, leading – at least for me – to some new discoveries of folks whose other works I’m going to check out, and even when the style or overall story direction isn’t necessarily to my taste, nothing hear reads as amateurish or rushed or silly.

From a design perspective (Matt Sheridan), we get great covers (from either Li Prillaman or Ben Dewey), a table of contents AND page numbers (these two things ridiculously lacking in some anthologies), and creator bios at the end.  The binding is easily flippable and the page / cover stock is sturdy but light; it’s a good book for toting around and opening up to whatever page.

Not only a prime example of how to anthologize, but also just some damn fine stories as well.