Witty and erudite, this collection of fantasy fiction, piece set in a futurist civilization, really underscores the timeless, universal qualities that do us human: the search for love and meaning in our lives, a fundamental compassion for fellow beings, the resilience of humor that renders desperation bearable. Sergiu Somesan draws on surreal pictures of advanced societies (automaton-soldiers programmed with computer chips, time-altering technologies, the lovely humanoid Isabel of the title story), yet grounds them in classic legends travel from production mythologies to an invasion of the Huns. Even as as we laugh at the absurdity of governmental dicta regarding the fate of an baby deemed a "military genius," we are stopped up cold at the mother's loss of that child ("Goo-Goo-Ga-Ga General"); our chuckles at the really practical fears of friends on an outing turn to chills at the at hand death of Planet Earth once a computer program solves the "unsolvable" Tower of Brahma ("The Egg"). In a earth wherever technology seems capable of anything, readers are reminded that we humans with our faults and foibles still lend the elements of love, laughter, and common sense-a comforting and assuasive endorsement, after all, of our humanity!