The editorial collaboration of fantasy superstar Gaiman and brilliant anthologist Sarrantonio seemingly ensures a most distinguished sf-fantasy-horror collection. Mainstream and mystery stars (Roddy Doyle, Jodi Picoult, Carolyn Parkhurst, Jeffery Deaver, Walter Mosley, Chuck Palahniuk) as well as big sf-fantasy-horror names, including all-ages luminaries Diana Wynne Jones and Richard Adams, all contribute. Yet most of these stories are tepid; a few are unreadably bad. Joe R. Lansdale’s “The Stars Are Falling” proves absorbing, though (and because) its characters, plot, and setting strongly recall those of Robinson Jeffers’ searing antiwar poem, “The Double Axe.” Gene Wolfe’s space-exploration tale “Leif in the Wind” is a tersely worded treat, Joe Hill’s “Devil on the Staircase” is cleverly shaped (literally: the paragraphs look like flights of stairs), and Michael Moorcock’s memoirlike “Stories,” while neither sf, fantasy, or horror, is wonderfully affecting. And Elizabeth Hand’s awe-inspiring “The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon,” in which three men and two teen boys replicate the flight of a pre–Wright brothers airplane, is as magical and beautiful a light fantasy as anyone has ever written. –Ray Olson