The first -- and to date, essentially the only -- collection of the short fiction of the late Terry Carr, heretofore known primarily not as an author but as a science fiction editor and anthologist (Best SF of the Year series).
This third installment in "The Harlan Ellison Discovery Series" is a mixed bag, with conventional adventure tales ("The Winds at Starmount") and one-joke fantasies ("Stanley Toothbrush," "Sleeping Beauty") outnumbering a few truly brilliant and innovative stories ("The Dance of the Changer and the Three," "They Live on Levels"). The best of these, "Ozymandias," had its first appearance several years earlier in Ellison's anthology Again, Dangerous Visions.
Carr apparently recognized his limitations as a creator of tales, as opposed to a purveyor of them; online bibliographies list only four short-stories written during the period between publication of The Light at the End of the Universe in 1976 and his death, at age 50, in 1987. However, Carr did complete one acclaimed novel (Cirque, 1978) during that time, and if anything his reputation as a science-fiction editor only grew. Among other accomplishments in his later years, Carr was the editor responsible for bringing William Gibson's Neuromancer to print, and thus unleashing cyberpunk upon the universe.
