Book Review:
Bret Funk, Editor; Beacons of Tomorrow

by Jerry Wright

It was interesting to read Beacons Of Tomorrow and compare it to The First Bewildering Stories Anthology. As usual with story collections, the quality was uneven, but in general quite high. Several of the stories were extremely funny, such as "Evil, Inc." and some were strange, but well written, as in "The Prisoner". Our own Danielle Parker was well represented by "A Dream Within", which was a slow story that reminded me in many ways of stories from the 1940s or 50s. Perhaps it might have been a story by A. Merrit. The ending was a surprise, and well done. A very funny Robert E. Howard pastiche of a rock-thewed, rock-headed sailor named Steve Costigan was presented in the story "Slugger's Paradise" by Charles Gramlich. The story, written in the sailor's own dialect was irritating at the beginning, and I was afraid it would become tedious, but the story took off, and I could definitely see it appearing in an old "Weird Tales" magazine.

A number of the other stories, such as "A Pyg's Perspective" and "Woman of the Web" were well written and interesting but were a bit of a disappointment as I thought that a lot more could have been done with them, but hey they were complete stories with an actual beginning, middle and end. Is the book worth $11.99? Considering much of what I've read, I have to agree. A very nice book, and Mr. Funk is to be congratulated on his "stable of authors", many of whom should do well in writing SF and Fantasy.

Copyright © 2006 Jerry Wright and Bewildering Stories

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