Farmer has never been an author I would number among my favorites, although I enjoyed a few of his John Carmody stories quite a bit. Indeed the first two thirds of this collection left me feeling rather indifferent (I skipped “Riders of the Purple Wage,” which had been one of my favorite stories in the original Dangerous Visions anthology). Most of the stories were hung on an interesting concept, and I could see that many of them had pushed the scifi envelope both in terms of topic and manner of dealing therewith. At the same time, few of the characters or plotlines felt particularly compelling. These stories were at their best when Farmer was being funny, and at times he plunges wholeheartedly into the absurd. They were at there worst when nubile young ladies pranced around in revealing outfits admiring the protagonists’ muscles (though to be fair, there was at times more to the nubile young things than first met the eye, especially in “The Lovers”).

I found the last third of the stories generally quite a bit better, even such raunchy tales as “The Henry Miller Dawn Patrol” (which I found quite amusing). I also particularly enjoyed “After King Kong Fell” and “Sketches among the Ruins of My Mind.” The characters in these later stories are generally more sympathetic and I found myself caring quite a bit more about what happened to them. I found “Riverworld” a decent, if somewhat clumsy story (this coming from someone who had intensely disliked To Your Scattered Bodies Go).

The two stories that really left me scratching my head were “The Oogenesis of Bird City” and “The King of Beasts.” ( )