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Strange But Not a Stranger (Golden Gryphon, $25.95) is a welcome collection
of short stories by James Patrick Kelly. His best stories deal with the
agony of choice. In the Hugo Award-winning "1016 to 1," a 12-year-old
science fiction fan meets an emissary from the future in the year 1962; the
emissary wants him to save the world by assassinating Adlai Stevenson,
thereby precipitating a war against the Soviet Union but avoiding a later
conflict that would wipe out the human race. In "Glass Cloud," an
architect with an unhappy personal life must decide whether to accept a
commission from enigmatic aliens who want him to build "a tomb for a
goddess" on a distant planet. My favorite is "Chemistry," in which a
woman searching for love in a commercial "neuromance palace" must
distinguish between a chemically induced attraction that feels real and the
fearful prospect of the real thing.
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