For twenty-three years, the Writers of the Future contest and its sister competition, Illustrators of the Future, have been awarding prizes to new science fiction writing and drawing talent. The contest is judged by major science fiction writers and artists, creators who have proven to be gifted and successful. One must wonder, then, why the resulting anthology is so uninspired. Several titles have interesting premises, such as Aliette de Bodard's Obsidian Shards, a religion-steeped mystery set in the ancient Aztec empire, or The Sun God at Dawn, Rising from a Lotus Blossom by Andrea Kail, featuring a correspondence between Abraham Lincoln and Tutankhamen, which is intriguing but tries too hard to make a point at the end. Many pieces, however, are a little too reminiscent of older, better-crafted works of science fiction. The illustrations are likewise a disappointment, although their lackluster appearance might stem from being reprinted in black and white in a mass-market paperback format. They offer little to the stories they illuminate and are not even laid out before the story they accompany, even though the contest rules state that the illustrations are selected based on the judge's "personal opinion on the extent to which it makes the judge want to read the story it illustrates." Rules and submission information for both contests are included, so libraries with avid science fiction writers or artists might consider steering them toward this book, although they are the only likely readers. Reviewer: Snow Wildsmith