F/SF

This is a simple collection of science fiction tales, published back in 1980. None of the tales are particularly "stellar", but my fondness for the lead tale, "The Sword of Damocles" by James P. Hogan, led me to keep the book on my shelf. "Damocles" is a tale of temporal blackmail, where an alien artifact enables unscrupulous fellows from the past hold the future for ransom. The other tales in the book are:

"Chains of Air, Web of Aether" by Philip K. Dick, a tale of two people stationed in at communications outposts in the depths of space.
"Grimm's Law" by L. Neil Smith, in which a time courier kills some time in a bar, regaling the bartender with an account of a recent job.
"Corpus Cryptic" by Lee Killough, a murder mystery solved by the scientific research of an assistant coroner.
"Elbow Room" by Marion Zimmer Bradley, another tale about a woman carrying out vital work in the lonely reaches of the cosmos.
"The Nobel Laureate" by Robert H. Curtis, a glimpse of what might have been if the gods had not chosen to intervene.
"All that Glitters" by G.C. Edmondson, a tale of another lonesome soul, this time in the nearby Yukon, who gets an interesting new neighbor.
"The Subtle Serpent" by Charles Sheffield, a story about a starfaring crew searching for the resources to repair their ship and escape from a primitive planet.
--J ( )