The Aliens of Earth

Decent Arkham House collection from the early 90's. I have never read any of Nancy Kress's work before this so I didn't know what to expect. Although this is categorized as scifi, the scifi elements were minor to most of the stories and there was no hard scifi at all. These were more like fantasy, urban-fantasy stories. Most either occurred in a pure fantasy setting or a near future scenario. The two novellas here were particularly good making me want to seek out some of her novel length stuff. There were a few creeps but mostly I would characterize these as weird tales.

The themes ran an interesting gamut and overall there was a lot of variety. None of the stories inter connected at all. Writing was crisp and dialog was believable. show more Character drove a lot of the plots.

One side note: Jim Turner get's a lot of grief for his tenure at Arkham House. After August Derleth died he was criticized for bringing too much science fiction and fantasy and not enough horror in. However, the more I read from his era, the more I like the books and authors he brought in, particularly in the late 80's and 90's. Once Turner left, under somewhat shabby circumstances, to start Golden Gryphon, the Derleth family took over again and more horror came back, but the overall quality of the books definitely went downhill. There were a lot of retreads and too much focus on the golden era of Arkham House. A lot of Arkham House and Lovecraft ephemera crept in and the overall quality of the actual writing being published went downhill. There were still a few gems.

Golden Gryphon published some excellent titles and authors, at least until Turner passed away. show less