This collection of 6 stories appeared to be just another mediocre batch until the novella that takes up half of the digest. Lucius Shepard was a favorite author of mine when I first encountered him in the mid 1980's and I've read numerous stories of his over the years. The novella here, "Human History" is a different sort of dystopia set maybe 700 years into the future, and is told as a story by one of characters. Not a perfect story and rather violent in parts, it nevertheless was clearly the best here and merits the 3 star good rating from me. ( )