It is perhaps a mixed bag, but some of these well-written stories are truly gripping. Most of them centre around ''obsessional'' problems and the various ways people are coping with them. The mood alternates between grim and sad, only a few have a lighter tone and are not among the best. It gets very sad in Little Red Schoolhouse, a succesful mixture of a critical view on future (= current) educational practice and the struggle of a child with its emotional environment. The heroics of Granite goddess are very credible too. Here a man climbs a giant scuplture of a woman (on another planet) that in his innermost has taken the place of his wife. Again, inner struggle and adverse circumstances match excellently. Hilarious is Romance in a twenty-first century used-car lot, where people wear cars instead of clothes. The shy and demure Arabella is an unlikely protagonist that both moves and appears slightly ridiculous. Most gripping story: the true love across seemingly unpassable barriers of time, as told in The dandelion girl. Certainly worth picking up for the above examples. ( )