A group writing effort, in which a short scenario written by Keith Laumer -- protagonist Bailey reports to the Euthanasia Center -- serves as a springboard to five tales by five different authors. Like Ellison's later, far more ambitious Medea: Harlan's World, this admirable attempt at collaborative fiction works better in concept than in execution.
Two of the stories in Five Fates are forgettable. In "The Fatal Fulfillment," Poul Anderson uses Bailey's elective suicide as an alternate history device, allowing the author to explore a number of strange social systems -- no doubt a topical approach amid the political hubbub of the early 1970s, but Roddenberryish in its naivete in retrospect. Gordon R. Dickson's "Maverick," which transports Bailey's soul to a planet of winged humans, feels like an unrelated novella that has been awkwardly grafted onto this project. Rule of thumb: Any story that requires flow charts to explain the plot is probably not well conceived.
Two other stories are at least partly successful. Frank Herbert's "Murder Will In" is an interesting exploration of warring psychologies; Keith Laumer's "Of Death What Dreams," although marred by a hackneyed and arbitrary time-travel climax, sketches an interesting future society in which life itself is a betting sport.
Which leaves Ellison's "The Region Between," easily the best story in the book. Rather than using the Euthanasia Center merely as a jumpoff point to alien worlds or distopias, Ellison sees the scenario as an opportunity to explore deep theological themes: the meaning of an individual life, and of all life, in a seemingly meaningless universe. Illuminated using what were, at the time, some highly innovative typographical and stylistic approaches, "The Region Between" is thought-provoking storytelling.
The story later appeared in the Angry Candy collection.
