Helped me to realize just how much I enjoy Martin's writing style. Each story, no matter how short, sucked me in and kept me interested with what the next page would bring. ( )

Sandkings was really good, the rest kind of meh generally ( )

A very strong collection of GRRM's early writings from the 60s-80s or so - the format seems to indicate subsequent volumes will bring us up to the present date. All of this takes place before Ice and Fire was started, and in any case is only his short format writings - there are a couple of novellas. Broadly divided into a few sections from his childhood starting with comics through to becoming a professional writer - with a substantial overlap as no-one makes much money from it. There's commentary on how and why some of the stories were written and the difficulties of publishing science fiction (and fantasy before Tolkien!), followed by the stories themselves and then another section break.

It features many of his better known works (to anyone who's read anything other than Song) including my favourite Way of Cross and Dragon, but sadly ends on the horror collection (inc Sandkings) with the final story being the weakest of the whole book. ( )

A Four-Color Fanboy - The author recounts his entrance into the world of professional writing. He began sending stories off to comic fanzines and this led naturally into sending his college essays and stories off for publication as well. His minor successes as a young man built his confidence and helped him to deal with rejection positively. What follows are a series of some of his earliest works.

Only Kids Are Afraid of the Dark - This is an episodic adventure for the off-brand superhero Dr. Weird. He is a spirit of energy and light and in this adventure he faces off against a demon god who is trying to resurrect the cult which served him many centuries ago. However, he is no match for Dr. Weird's cunning.

The Fortress - A historical fiction piece about the siege of Sveaborg during the Finnish war of early 1800. The Russian forces blockade a fortress on the edge of the sea and convince the commanding officers to surrender to avoid further loss of life. The commander who agreed is viewed as a traitor and a coward because the castle was well prepared to withstand for long enough for reinforcements to come. This was written as a school assignment and definitely reads like one.

And Death His Legacy - A man who has a terminal illness decides to use his last remaining days to plot the assassination of a rising fascist leader in America. Unfortunately, this only strengthens his cause and he becomes a martyr.

The Filthy Pro - Mr. Martin's reflections on the period in his life when he actually started to make money from his stories. This changed the course of his life and gave him confidence that he had something worthwhile to offer in the field of fiction.

The Hero - An intergalactic war hero decides to retire and move to Earth where he will be famous. He was raised off world and bred to be a soldier, so he would also be the strongest and fastest person on Earth. His commander reluctantly agrees despite the fact that he would be much more useful as a soldier or an instructor. Instead of sending him to Earth, however, he is taken out to space on a transport and killed. Because his type are considered to violent to be allowed loose among normal citizens.

The Exit to San Breta - In the far future when cars have become obsolete, a lone collector decides to drive his antique Jaguar across the country on the decrepit highway. One night, while he is driving he passes into a liminal space where he sees a family driving in a rare car. They collide and the family burns to death while he watches. When he returns to the scene of the accident with police, he discovers his car undamaged and no sign of the family. Later, he learns that this stretch of highway is haunted and many have witnessed exactly what he did over the years.

The Second Kind of Loneliness - After being disappointed in love and life in general, a man signs up for a four year shift at a remote posting on the edge of space. Working alone as what is essentially a space lighthouse keeper, he awaits the arrival of his relief. The story consists of excerpts from his journal and he imagines what his life will be like when he finally returns to earth. When his relief never arrives he realizes that the ship arrived months ago and he blew it up and then reset the calendar so he would forget about it. The story ends with him resetting the calendar again.

With Morning Comes Mistfall - There is a distant planet that has built up a fantastic reputation because of the sightings of "wraiths" which sometimes appear and attack visitors. The world is cloaked in a thick mist which falls at dawn, driven down by the sun, and rises at night. The wraiths are occasionally seen in the mist and are blamed for a number of disappearances over the years. The protagonist of the story is a journalist who comes to the planet to report on a scientific expedition which has come to the world to definitively determine what the wraiths are. He befriends the owner of a local inn who deeply resents the investigators whom he believes will destroy the mystery of the wraths and thus end tourism to Wraithworld. In the end, this turns out to be at least partially true and the journalist is left with memories of this beautiful planet which is forgotten by most of the galaxy.

The Light of Distant Stars - A brief essay from the author introduces this collection of science fiction stories.

A Song for Lya - A telepath and an empath are called to an alien world where the local government is having trouble with the native religion. It's a bizarre suicide cult which has the locals marching off to what is known as "the Final Union" as they approach old age. In the caves below the planet is a giant red spore monster that consumes the bodies of the faithful and grows ever stronger. All that is fine, until the human residents begin converting. The two protagonists have been commissioned to discover why humans are signing up for religious sacrifice. What they discover is more disturbing than anyone imagined. It turns out that the aliens are right - that big wobbly red thing in a cave is actually God. And when they join with it they never die but live together in perfect love. Lya, the telepath, joins and her boyfriend flees the planet before he can follow her.

This Tower of Ashes - A reclusive hunter who lives on an alien world harvesting valuable venom sacs from the local spiders is visited by his ex wife and her new lover. Wanting to show off the jungle paradise he resides in, the protagonists offers to take the two on a midnight tour. However, things go awry when the lover falls into a Dream Spider web. The protagonist makes a selfless choice to save him at the expense of protecting himself from another spider. He survives, but his memory of the night is changed leaving him with confusing memories.

And Seven Times Never Kill Man - An indigenous population is being wiped out on a planet where a murderous cult from earth has set their sights on colonization. One earth born trader tries to teach the locals to fight back with lasers, but his attempts are rejected. Instead the populace makes an idol of the blood-thirsty earth god and gives it to the invaders. Many are still killed, but the cult becomes drunk on their own fanaticism and soon begins culling their own to achieve purity.

The Stone City - On a distant planet of sentient fox-men, a ship of humans was forced to land due to an emergency. They now find themselves trapped with little chance of escape. The various members of the crew begin to splinter off: some become addicted to the local drugs, others disappear into the huge Stone City that lays hauntingly empty. The protagonist spends his time begging the foxmen to give him passage on any ship that comes by. Eventually, he snaps and kills the foxman who routinely denies him a berth. With few other options, he flees into the stone city where he is drawn into strange doorways that appear to distort time and space.

Bitterblooms - A young woman finds herself alone in an unforgiving winterscape on a distant planet. Her mate has recently died from vampire attack and she does not have enough food to make it back to the settlement. She is saved from meeting a similar fate by a mysterious woman named Morgan who styles herself as a interstellar witch. She makes the woman, Shawn, her lover and fills her head full of stories and her arms full of trinkets. Eventually, Shawn realizes that they aren't really traveling the galaxy together. Rather she is just being shown distant worlds on the witch's "magic window". She leaves and spends the rest of her days with her people until during a harsh winter she must leave or be ousted. She returns to the strange ship and calls for Morgan but there is no answer.

The Way of Cross and Dragon - In the distant future, the religion of Christianity has developed into an interstellar super power which travels the stars fighting heresy. The protagonists is a man in the midst of losing his faith who is charged with combating a new heresy - the Way of Cross and Dragon which has made Judas Iscariot into a saint. It's a silly belief that reimagines Judas as a Babylonian king with a brood of dragons. At the heart of this new religion is a man who is a member of secret order known as the Liars. He doesn't believe in this new book he wrote, but is dedicated to inspiring belief in others in order to make them happy. The protagonist is asked to join them, but he refuses. Not because he believes in Christ but because he believes in truth. In the end, he loses his faith entirely, but the church doesn't care. He's too good at his job to let go.

The Heirs of Turtle Castle - The author introduces a collection of fantasy stories and recounts his history with the genre.

The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr - A high fantasy story told about a warrior woman of legend who travels the many worlds looking for her lost love. Each world she encounters she must defeat a guardian before finding the gate to the next world. This story finds her in Laren Dorr's world - a sad minstrel who plays songs for her and entices her with love to end her search. Eventually, she decides she must continue on and leaves him behind.

The Ice Dragon - A young girl born in winter grows up different. She is cold, both emotionally and to the touch. Her family and her community are uncomfortable with her. She doesn't care because she has made friends with an Ice Dragon. It comes every winter and takes her for rides. But the war comes closer every year. Although her family wants her to evacuate, she refuses because she knows that the Ice Dragon will never find her again. When the soldiers come, the Ice Dragon comes too and rescues her and her family, although it dies in the process. The little girl is changed and grows up to be a warm and normal girl.

In the Lost Lands - A legendary merchant woman is approached by the servant of a local noble. She has fallen in love with a werewolf and wants the power to transform herself. However, she wants to be able to change whenever she wishes. The servant is also one of the noble woman's lovers and wishes this endeavor to fail. The merchant agrees to both. She then commissions someone to lead her to a werewolf. The noble's lover takes her out into the lost lands where monsters roam intending to kill her. However, she defeats him, skins him and returns with his skin having transformed it into a robe that will give shape shifting power to the noble. She also fulfills the servant's secret desire because now that her other lover is dead, the noble will marry him. But the noble goes mad with grief and her new husband is terrified of his werewolf wife. It's like a monkey's paw kind of thing.

Hybrids and Horrors - A brief essay introducing a collection of hybrid horror stories. The author discusses his experience of the horror genre and his struggle to find a market for his monster writings.

Meathouse Man - This is an incel manifesto. In the far future when distant worlds use corpses as free labor and employee "handlers" to manipulate the corpses through some sort of neural network, a lonely boy finds himself without a girlfriend. He is a successful handler - one of the best - but no woman will love him! That is to say, he has two girlfriends and it doesn't end well. He's been to the meathouse, where you can fuck a corpse while you animate it with your mind to perform whatever fantasy you have. He loves it, but tries to avoid it after his first girlfriend tells him not to give up on love. Anyway, he doesn't immediately find love so he gives up his work and joins the corpse fights. He has his own little corpse wife at home. And he tells her that she's lucky because no one ever told her that someone will love her someday. Which... I mean, she used to be alive, so someone probably did? A very cridgey story.

Remembering Melody - A successful man finds himself cornered by a destitute friend from college named Melody. They promised before graduation to remain friends forever, but since then Melody has had countless opportunities to prey upon the good intentions of her friends. She a criminal, a drug addict, and is constantly threatening suicide and overstaying her welcome. Our protagonist is not happy to see her and determined to make sure her stay is short and is the last one. It ends with Melody killing herself in his shower. Except she didn't. She was never really there. Melody died months ago in Iowa. But now she's visiting all her old friends to drive them insane for not helping her.

Sandkings - A wealthy collector of rare pets returns from a trip to discover most of his creatures dead. Bored and annoyed, he visits a strange shop to acquire a new jewel to his collection. He does not want something cute - he wants something interesting that will shock and astound his friends. He eventually settles on a tank of sandkings - a strange hive mind that uses tiny mobile drones to build elaborate castles. What seals the deal is the odd way that the sandkings begin worshipping their owner and waging war against each other. Very quickly he gets bored with his new pets and begins starving and torturing them for his own amusement. However, when they escape their tank, the tables are dramatically turned.

Nightflyers - A team of scientists and academics book passage on an eccentric starship called the Nightflyer in order to travel to the edge of the galaxy where some unknown life form is rumored to pass. The captain of the vessel remains in his own private part of the ship that is totally cut off from the rest of the cabins and appears only as a hologram. Soon, the company's telepath begins to experience a feeling of dread and danger. It doesn't take long for the rest of the crew to begin to be suspicious of their mysterious captain as well. Then crew members start dying. Despite the appearance of guilt, the captain insists he is innocent and it is the ghost of his mother that is killing everyone. The crew will have to decide if they can trust him in this claustrophobic survival tale.

The Monkey Treatment - A story about a fat man who loves food and loves eating but also wants to be skinny who pursues a radical treatment known only as "The Monkey Treatment". He goes down to the docks on advice of one of his friends who has undergone the treatment and there finds a hideous fat man living in squalor who puts a monkey on his back. He is unable to take the monkey off and the monkey begins eating all his food before he can get it to his mouth. The man loses weight, but the monkey gains weight so that he remains the same weight. No one else seems to see the monkey. Soon, the man is skinny but weighed down by the heavy monkey on his back. And now the monkey seems to have fused with his body and is growing out of his shoulders. When he returns to the docks to complain, of course, the house where he got the monkey is gone. He goes to see his friend who also got the treatment and he discovers that the hideous fat monkey creature has taken over his friend's body and now his friend is just... I guess, the thing's penis? He throws himself off a building and manages to survive by landing on his fat monkey.

The Pear-Shaped Man - This is a story about a tremendously fat and creepy man who begin stalking the young protagonist when she moves into the apartment above him. She is annoyed and first, then scared. Worse, he's invading her dreams and effecting her art. She can't stop thinking about him. She eventually agrees to confront him alone thanks to her gaslighting friends. When she enters his apartment he kisses her and they swap bodies. Now she is the creepy man that no one likes who lives in a basement and eats cheez doodles.

Siiiigggghhhh, why does anyone make books like this? I mean, I guess there must be money in it, but I really don't appreciate reading the early and less polished work of a writer whose later work I admire. There are a handful of stories in this collection that are good, but most are pretty mediocre and unoriginal. The conclusion of the collection is also weird because there are two stories about how horrifying fat people are back to back. Just from an editorial perspective, I'm really confused by that. Anyhow, I feel like you would have to be really really obsessed with old George to get much out of this collection. Just reread the stuff he's written that you actually like. ( )

His early stuff, an interesting study. Some stories are a tad disturbing. ( )