The Ultimate Dinosaur: Past, Present, and Future

by Byron Preiss, Robert Silverberg

A collection of articles--including one by a leading paleontologist--speculating on the world of the dinosaurs includes contributions by Ray Bradbury, Robert Silverberg, Gregory Benford, Michael Bishop, and many others.

Genres: Science Fiction, Dinosaurs, Nature, Palaeontology, Fiction

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Byron Preiss was the president of Byron Preiss Visual Publications and Ibooks, and was recognized as a pioneer in digital publishing. He was among the first publishers to release CD-ROM's and electronic books.

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Preiss graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1972 and earned a master's degree in communications from Stanford University. He produced The Words of Gandhi, an audio book that won a Grammy Award in 1985. He was also the co-author of Dragonworld, a novel he co-wrote with J. Michael Reaves that was published by Bantam Books in 1979.

A proponent of illustrated books, as well as comics and graphic novels, Preiss also published works by celebrity authors including Jane Goodall, Billy Crystal, Jerry Seinfeld, LeAnn Rimes and Jay Leno.

Reviews

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

So far, this is my least favorite of the Byron Preiss "Ultimate" series, probably because it's science fiction rather than horror.

This collection includes both non fiction essays as well as fictional short stories. I skimmed over the essays because they seemed a little dry. The stories were okay, nothing really stood out to me. There were some really beautiful illustrations as well.

If you're really interested in dinosaurs and like to read non fiction about them, you'd probably love this one. If you're more interested in the fiction, it could go either way.

[Sol]

For "Dawn of the Endless Night" by Harry Harrison

[Tim Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Ultimate Dinosaur is an ambitious book, one that seeks to alternate sections on the latest (circa 1993) theories on the origin, lives, and deaths of dinosaurs as well as pterosaurs and prehistoric marine reptiles, all written by such noted experts as George Olshevsky, Sankar Chatterjee, and others, with dinosaur-themed science fiction short stories by such authors as Charles Sheffield, Gregory Benford, and Harry Turtledove. A great concept.

Unfortunately, it was rather unevenly carried out. The non-fiction sections are quite good, though a few are relatively dry to read. I did learn a few things reading these sections, and alone they just about make the book worthwhile. There were some interesting discussions over the relationship of prosauropods and sauropods for instance, and there was a great article on migrating dinosaurs.

However, the short stories vary a lot in style and quality, some quite good, other more moderately decent, and a few frankly terrible and hard to get through. The short stories and non-fictions are paired together, and it looks like they found it difficult to find a short story to put with some of the non-fiction sections.

Though this may only apply to the hard-cover edition which I have, I feel I must point out the book was either poorly edited, which I find surprising, or poorly published. The book was replete with words that were run together, misplaced punctuation, odd gaps in sentences, and even misspelled words. They were so common at times that it was jarring and irritating. While many books have one or two such errors, there were many of them in this work. Hopefully the paperback version cleared this up.

Having said that though this was still not a bad book and a worthwhile one to get, though frankly I would not place at the top of the list of books to fill your dinosaur needs. Still, wouldn't be bad to have either.

[bluetyson]

The Ultimate Dinosaur by Robert Silverberg (2000)