The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge

When I started reading Across Realtime, I knew that I wanted to read the story that fell in between the two books contained within (see my review of Across Realtime for more info) so I grabbed this short story collection on my Kindle.  As I mentioned before, Vernor Vinge has some fantastic ideas and so I was a little worried that the short story format would not give him time to explore each idea to the fullest.  There were definitely some ideas that I felt could have held up whole novels, but it was definitely a good read, especially for fans of his other work.   As one would expect from a short story collection there were many good stories and a few bad ones.

Each of the stories had an introduction by him and some of them had a post script as well.  It made the collection have a much more personal feel than it otherwise would have.  I wish that other short story collections would do the same.  It also helped to explain the background of some of the stories that were part of his larger work collections.

This was a nice little collection.  My biggest problem with it is that, when you read all of his short stories, some of which are set in the same (or at least very similar) worlds as his novels, it becomes apparent that he does not place nearly as much value on a cohesive canon as I do.  Perhaps that is unfair.  What I mean to say is that some of the stories that take place in (supposedly) the same universe as some of his other stories are so different from the novel based stories in those universes as to necessitate serious explanation as to how the characters reached that point.

However, that is more of a personal problem than any one with the book.  Overall, I would give this book an 86%.