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This book is a series of short stories, all of them very different. Most of them appear more as vignettes of life rather than having a nice and tidy ending and I like that.

What if we saw the typical horror story from the monster's side? Or if we needed to house humans right at the bottom of a deep sea trench, what could that look like?

There is a lot to take in and most of the stories were very entertaining without being a heavy hard-going read. If you like to read a story and think, "I've never seen it from that way" this is a worthwhile addition to your library.

And the end-notes reference a John Brunner book, which always a bonus in my, err, book.

What if, the Federation wasn't this big happy family and the humans weren't in charge but were only some minor part of some larger alien empire?

I enjoyed this book, it has a lot of politics; if you found the scenes in The Expanse around the earth parliament annoying, this book is not for you.

It also explains in an entertaining way how tricky being a Galatic Empire is, even (or perhaps because) you have the ships with the Big Guns.

This is a very typical John Brunner fragmented writing, some call it postmodernism writing. There are a set of seemingly unrelated short stories with the exception of the (almost) all-powerful Traveler in Black.

We watch the Traveler visit many strange lands, all the while bringing the world out of chaos. To do this, the Traveler must grant wishes; the twist being the old adage "be careful what you wish for".

How are these lands related and who is the Traveler? Some of these questions are answered, some remain a mystery.