(I think I liked the Farmer sequence better for having seen the end of the arc.)Philip Jose Farmer - Stations of the NightmareGuy shoots at quail flock in his neighbour's field, and hits a very small flying saucer instead. I read a library copy of volume 4 a few years after buying this volume, and can vaguely remember something about the closing stories of only those two authors as well. This is surprising, because there are some good stories in here.
The others seem completely unfamiliar to me. Nevertheless, I was surprised to find that I only remembered two of the stories - the one by Philip Jose Farmer, which I don't actually like very much and don't think works as a standalone and the story from Anne McCaffrey, which is the first part of what later became The Crystal Singer, and which I've thus read a fair number of times in the novel. It was published in 1974 and was edited by Roger Elwood, which is an entertaining and informative tale in itself.I bought my copy of volume 1 about thirty years ago, and for various reasons (including the dreaded "it was only going to be in storage for a year or two") I probably haven't read it for close to twenty years.
This is the first of a 4 book anthology series, where the series concept is to have a set of four stories from each author, one per volume, which can each be read as individual stand-alone stories, but which together make up a story arc. “The Night Of The Storm” has four robots trapped by a snowstorm in a cabin being picked off one by one by a mythical creature - a human being! Great story! Highlight of the volume however is the final offering by Dean Koontz.
Mutant births and home truths abound in this cautionary tale. In a post-holocaust USA Brother Abraham and his child followers are travelling through on their way to found a New Jerusalem in Edgar Pangborn’s marvellous ��The Children’s Crusade”. Anne McCaffrey gives us an origin story for her famous series in “Prelude To A Crystal Song”, while Thomas Scortia shows us a frightening invasion of mind-controlling insectoids in “The Armageddon Tapes - Tape I”. Killashandra fails her last vocal exam and flees the Music Center in despair but meets up with Carrik, a rich spendthrift who offers to teach her to be a Crystal Singer. Poul Anderson provides an entertaining standalone though, with the tale of settlers on a new world trying to retrieve a crashed ship in “My Own, My Native Land”, and Chad Oliver has a readable piece of space opera where a visiting crew manipulates the locals who developed a warlord similar to “Shaka!” Zulu. Paul Eyre shoots a flying saucer and seems to get super powers. Philip Jose Farmer’s story “Stations Of The Nightmare - Part One” is just that. Roger Elwood had a very spotty record as a book editor in the 1970s and this series promised four volumes of connected stories by the same eight authors (more or less) which stand alone.
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