Dancing on Air
This complex novella applies genetic engineering to the art of ballet. The plot is thick with twists and turns, and there are some very interesting segments in which the point of view character is a semi-intelligent bio-engineered dog. This is a great buy if you're a patron of ballet or want to learn some ballet terminology. The science concepts are all there too, and there's a little murder mystery thrown in for good measure. I enjoyed it even though I'm not a big ballet fan. At times I found the descriptions of ballet moves incomprehensible and perhaps once or twice tedious, but it's a small price to pay for an otherwise excellent story. This story was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula awards. It has a length of 21,000 words, and is priced at $1.85.

Margin of Error
This low-priced story is quite short; you can read it in less than ten minutes. It shows two sisters pitted in a struggle after one leaves her genetic engineering firm to become a mother. It's nice, but not as good as the others in this bundle. Kress appears to be right in her assessment that she's more attuned to novellas than very short stories like this one. The low price, however, justifies this as a reasonable way to spend a few minutes of reading time. It has a length of 2100 words, and is priced at $0.39.

Eliot Mercury can be reached at mercury@picoturbine.com.