Reviews for Inside the Funhouse: Seventeen Science Fiction Stories about Science Fiction

The average rating for Inside the Funhouse: Seventeen Science Fiction Stories about Science Fiction based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-06-26 00:00:00 Ruth Anderson A pretty good collection of stories about writing science fiction. Ranges from the brilliant-but-difficult "A Galaxy Called Rome" by Barry N. Malzberg to the cute but unchallenging "His Award Winning Science Fiction" story by editor Resnick to the amusing but too-long and kind of tedious "The Curse of Mhondoro Nkabele" by Eric Norden. Standouts in addition to Malzberg's two stories include "Hapgood's Hoax" by Allen Steele, about a fictional LRHubbard-esque character, "The Monkey's Finger" by Isaac Asimov, "Who's Cribbing" by Jack Lewis, and the somewhat simplistic but oddly affecting & creepily apocalyptic "The World Science Fiction Convention of 2080." My main complaint with the book is that too many of the stories follow the same basic format or theme -- letters that hint at a time slip affecting the authorship of stories or the editorship of magazines. I like those, but it felt a bit repetitive. Overall it's a bit lighter and more clever than I like my SF. Nonetheless, while I wouldn't really recommend it to the casual reader, but for the SF-obsessed it's packed with in-jokes and general fun. It's a great quick fun read with some really amazing, brilliant stories and some interesting ones that aren't my thing, but that others will probably like. It'll actually make me seek out some of Resnick's other bazillion anthologies, as I enjoyed his editorial comments and overall the mix was pretty successful.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-03-13 00:00:00 Brian Oshea This is one of Resnick's more obscure anthologies, but I found it to be one of the most enjoyable. Long time fans will catch a lot of inside references to the field in many of the stories. Among my favorites were a classic from Pohl & (posthumously) Kornbluth, a pair of Malzbergs, a Sandor Courane tale from George Alec Effinger, and a terrific Allen Steele story. The cover is a very spooky thing by Tim O'Brien.