There is a rather unusual distribution in story lenghts with the first ie "Chessboard Planet" taking up two thirds of the book. The other three stories are progressively shorter. The introduction is an interesting note on fairy chess by Peter Pinto. The story deals with a futuristic extrapolation of East-West conflict where the latest weapon is an attack on the perception of reality. It reminded me vaguely of Brian Aldiss's "Barefoot in the Head". The second story "Camouflage" is a confrontation between a human and a Transplant which can perhaps be classified as a cyborg. I found the ending of the story rather weak. The third story "Android" deals with the fine line between intelligent androids and humans and the conflicts that arise. Karel Kapek in "Rossums Universal Robots" was perhaps the first to use this idea. The final story "Or Else" is the shortest, only 8 pages long, and is a humorous look at cultural differences. Modern politicians would benefit from reading this little story.

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