Benford, Gregory, Editor. The New Hugo Winners, Volume IV. New York: Baen, 11/97. 537pp. $8.99.

This is one of those books where I'd already read most of the stories elsewhere before picking it up. The ones I'd read elsewhere which I found memorable are those by Charles Sheffield, Nancy Kress and Connie Willis. The ones which were new to me (and which I mostly bought the book to read) which I found to be memorable were by Harry Turtledove, Lucius Shepard, Geoffrey Landis and Isaac Asimov. To be perfectly honest, I mostly bought the book to read Turtledove's "Down in the Bottomlands," which I found to be a fine story of political intreague and human failing in an environmentally devastated future (What, Harry, no alternate history?). But the surprise for me was Asimov's fine story, "Gold". It's a wry, self-deprecating look at a writer (in a 1950's New York-style future, natch) who would love to get one of his books filmed properly and the troubles he goes through to get it done. Looks like I'm becoming a bigger Asimov fan as I get older, eh?