The fifth in a series of superb science fiction.

The Alpha series of anthologies center on no particular theme except that of literary quality.

Two criteria were used in the selecting of these stories-literary merit and importance to the genre. The result is that the variety of subjects is matched only by the richness and diversity of their handling-brilliant, frightening, clever, bizarre, powerful, witty, funny-and several steps in-between. Simply put, here is the best science fiction from the best science fiction writers.

This group of stories gives pleasure by demonstrating the richness and variety of the science-fiction form. The stories show the reader visions he has not previously had, and send him away transformed and enlarged. The fifth volume of this highly acclaimed series features stories by promising new talents and by several of the field's most honored writers.

Some of the stories in this year's Alpha show us, with painful clarity, the approaching consequences of our most recent miscalculations; other stories take a longer view, portraying events in the remote galaxies that have only metaphorical applications to our immediate lives. Here are ten more visions of times to come, glimpses of the roads ahead.