The late George Alec Effinger was a seminal figure in SF, much appreciated by many readers, among whom must be counted Mike Resnick, who has already plugged a number of Effinger's stories into his own anthologies and here pens the introduction to editor Marty Halpern's work. A Thousand Deaths collects a number of the Sandor Courane stories, often autobiographical in important ways, for Courane, like Effinger himself, must face death in many ways. Here you will find the famous The Wolves of Memory, in which social misfit Courane is exiled to a planet that devours memory and must confront the machine, TECT, that rules humanity. In other tales Courane is an SF writer or editor, and the stories themselves, in Mike's words, are "the most creative, the most off-the-wall stories that George or just about anyone else ever put to paper."

People who write introductions can be forgiven for waxing a bit hyperbolic. That's what they're supposed to do, after all! You'll enjoy finding out whether Mike needs forgiveness.

— Tom Easton, "The Reference Library," Analog, December 2007