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Copy/paste the text below into your blog. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/111088.McSweeney_s_Mammoth_Treasury_of_Thrilling_Tales?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1171648355m/111088.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/111088.McSweeney_s_Mammoth_Treasury_of_Thrilling_Tales?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2715.Michael_Chabon">Michael Chabon</a><br/><br/> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6183776?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a> rating: 4 of 5 stars<br/>This was my first foray into McSweeney's, drawn into it by the inclusion of two of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman and Harlan Ellison, both of whose contributions, oddly enough, turned out to be some of the weaker stories included here (you read enough Gaiman and it becomes easy to tell when he's phoning it in, and Ellison, by virtue of being so prolific, has put out more than a few clunkers, especially as he gets more and more mired in his own lingo as he ages). Guest editor Michael Chabon oversees this anthology of genre fiction, and contributes one of its better pieces, a pulp-serial throwback piece called "The Martian Agent" (if the promised seconf installment exists, I haven't seen it). Chabon rounds up some of the usual suspects; in addition to Gaiman and Ellison, genre stalwarts like Stephen King, Elmore Leonard, Michael Crichton, and Michael Moorcock all have stories, with mixed results. King's "The Tale of Gray Dick" won't make any sense to anyone unfamiliar with his Dark Tower cosmology and Crichton's noir is slight, though Leonard fares best with his story of Texas lawman Carl Webster. <br/> <br/>The typical group of McSweeney's contributors and new voices take a stab at science fiction, not something you generally see with the likes of Nick Hornby. Of these stories, Rick Moody's Philip K. Dick-inspired "The Albertine Notes" is too impenetrable to enjoy, while Dave Eggers's ostensible piece of adventure fiction, "Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly" barely fits the theme but is a strong story nonetheless. My favorites were Glen David Gold's "The Tears of Squonk, and What Happened Thereafter" and the pieces by Chabon, Leonard, Moorcock, and Eggers. Veteran comic book artist Howard Chaykin contributes illustrations. Chaykin's art is always identifiable on sight, and that's no different here, which could be good or bad depending on how you feel about Chaykin. <br/> <br/>As is is usually the case with these collections, "Individual results may vary." Not all of these authors are able to explicate their science fiction concepts as well as they think they can, but there's a few genuine surprises and disappointments to be had in what's generally a fairly novel collection of stories and a nice gesture of inclusion to genres unfairly ghettoed away from "literary" fiction. <br/> <br/> <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/347733?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>