Under the Simple Stars

Characterized as "odds and sods of science fiction," this collection of four novelettes includes one of the Lost Boy stories, "Though I Sang in My Chains Like the Sea," previously published in Asimov's Science Fiction, "Slowly Comes a Hungry People," a tale of the origin of humanity from the wonderful British magazine Interzone, and two stories making their first appearance here: "Cast a Cold Eye," an unusual take on the cosmetics industry, originally scheduled to appear in Fantastic Stories, which folded on the eve of publication, and "Three Soldiers," a war story from a vaporware anthology that would have been quite prophetic in its day.