Ensley's work has been influenced by the great pulp illustrators of an earlier era and a childhood filled with heaping doses of Lost in Space, The Herculoids, and Robert Heinlein.

Di Filippo's imagination is too restless for his work to be so easily categorized. His bibliography is dominated by a string of diverse thematic collections that showcase the breadth of his erudition and the scope of his oeuvre.

This is the time, the Soothspeaker said, / the webbing of her mind filled with tangles / of light, the clusters of her eyes pressed / shut.

None of them were comfortable tales, and most of them were edloña, unspeakable, unthinkable. Why I returned, I could not say.

"Something about thematic collections always appealed to me. They just seemed stronger than grab-bag assemblages. Almost novelistic in their impact, without quite being 'fix-ups.'"