Rating: 
Summary: Mostly mediocre
Review: Unfortunately this colelction contains, mostly, the short versions of far better novels. We get an excerpt from "The Forever war" by Joe Haldeman and the proto-type short story on which Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game" was based. In both cases I think the long versions are much better than this...The PKD story is also good however has been reprinted so many times I must have it 5x by now ^_^The only truly great short here is Walter Jon William's "Wolf Time", which is a short story set after his book "Voice of the Whirlwind". Overall I was pretty disappointed by this collection. I was hoping it would have some new voices or some older voices I'ld never heard of. Actually the intro mentions a book called "Men in the Jungle" by Norman Spinrad. I got that and it was the best thing to come out of this collection for me.
Rating: 
Summary: More of an Intro than a "Best of"
Review: While the thirteen stories in this volume are, for the most part, well done, a couple aren't really military SF at all and others are glimpses into still better works by the same authors. A couple aren't even strong enough to be considered in a "best of" collection. There are some gems here. Orson Scott Card's classic "Ender's Game" definitely deserves to be a volume with this title. I highly recommend the novel-length expansion of the story and it's sequels (most notably the companion novel, "Ender's Shadow" and "Shadow of the Hegemon"). David Drake's "Hangman" is an excellent introduction to his Hammer's Slammers series which also requires inclusion in a volume such as this. Walter Jon Williams's "Wolf Time" is one of the best stories in the volume, taking place in the same universe as "Voice of the Whirlwind". And Joe Haldeman expanded "Hero" to become "Forever War" (and its sequels). Anne McCaffrey's "Dragonrider" was, likewise, the beginning of a large franchise, but it's inclusion as an example of military SF is quite a stretch. Similarly, Harry Turtledove's "The Last Article" is an excellent story, but it would have fit much better in his "best alternate history" collection than in this volume. Other classics include Poul Anderson's "Among Thieves" (an intro to his Polesotechnic League universe), Philip K. Dick's "Second Variety" (recently made, like so many of his stories, into a movie), and C. J. Cherryh's "The Scapegoat". I also enjoyed George R. R. Martin's "Night of the Vampyres". Gregory Benford's "To the Storming Gulf" is not military at all; it would, instead, fit quite nicely in a collection of post-apocalyptic fiction. While touted by some as a classic, I have never been impressed with Cordwainer Smith's "The Game of Rat and Dragon". And Arthur C. Clarke's "Superiority" is merely clever. Any number of other stories could have replaced either of these tales in a "best of" volume.
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