Rating: 
Summary: Only some of Bester's best
Review: Maybe, to my taste, Alfred Bester was better at book length (The Stars My Destination, Golem 100, The Demolished Man (an all-time favorite of mine)) than at short stories. Most of the stories here left me a bit cold except , of course, for "The Pi Man", Bester's best short story. In fact, unfortunately, I found many of them to be rewrites of the same concept - a cross between "be careful what you wish for", and "absolute power always goes wrong."
Rating: 
Summary: The best
Review: The best set of sci fi stories I've ever read (and I've read a lot!)
Rating: 
Summary: Much of his short fiction is disappointingly pedestrian.
Review: There are some gems here, notably "Fondly Farenheit" and the previously unpublished "The Devil Without Glasses", but most of the short stories are decidedly second-rate. "Galatea Galante" is a clumsy Heinlein pastiche. "They Don't Make Life Like They Used To" is the sort of leaden "whimsy" which has plagued Fantasy & Science Fiction for the last half century. And several of the stories from the early 50's are thinly veiled diatribes against the paucity of original thought in "classic" science fiction. (Bester makes the wholly convincing argument that most of genre is little more than adolescent power fantasies, but fails to provide stories that provide a meaningful counterpoint.)Stick to the novels - THE STARS MY DESTINATION and THE DEMOLISHED MAN, Bester's best work.
Rating:
Summary: This will blow you away, and your preconceptions as well.
Review: This is a collection of some of the most unorthodox short stories even by the standards of science fiction. One can never tell where these will take us, and even then we are surprised at the results. Reading this will change everything, because afterwards very few things will seem weird. Many of these are tour de force of writting to show of the fact that the author could get away with something, that would be considered bad in writting of lesser carliber, but Bester's power-writting simply cuts through the rules, and gives us some truly out-of-this-world stories, which overpower the reader. In some it is the idea that is the main thing, and elsewhere it is the presentation, which is allpowerful, but each and every time we are left surprised, amazed by the end result. Some of these could be called parodies of classical sciece fiction cliches. (Besides Bester invented some things, that has become cliches since, and yet in his prose they are still powerful, and not cliched at all.) Some are funny, and some are sad, and most are weird, but they are all memorable.
Rating: 
Summary: Almost everything by Bester is worth reading
Review: This is good stuff, I'm glad I read it. It is perhaps a misfortune that I started out with Bester by reading The Stars My Destination, which remains one of the all time great things I have ever read -- nothing else is ever quite as good. Nonetheless, I much enjoyed this collection, and the stories have the unmistakeable Bester touch. Definitely recommended.
Rating:
Summary: GREAT!
Review: This is one of very few books i can ead again and again, and every time is like the first time. Absolutely stunning! Just buy it!
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