I didn't buy this book to give me insight into being a writer. I bought it to be entertained. In that regard I was entertained for about half the book. Some stories are downright bad and left me wondering what the point was. Others were very good and left me wanting more. Some were nothing spectacular, but nothing I'd call bad either.

The interviews with the writers weren't anything groundbreaking or insightful, just more of the same kind of stuff I've seen before. I felt the anecdotes were the best parts in some cases, but then some anecdotes left me wondering if the writer understood the question.

A decent offering, but a format I wouldn't want to see again.

I thought this a fascinating collection, in a completely different way than the usual Planet Stories books. As a bit of an amateur writer, this book was very encouraging; from this perspective, I value this book as much as any other 'How to Write Sci-Fi' that I've ever purchased. In fact, as the brother of an amateur writer, this book also made a great gift.

It's true the stories aren't the best from each author. To me, this compilation is more about the genre of sci-fi and the process or writing than it is the stories themselves. It's sort of the DVD Extras of the sci-fi industry.

The only reason I only rated it four stars is for those who on read books, and never even play with writing. For them, this book is only mostly good.

as some of the other reviewers have said, some of the stories are hit or miss. That being said, the stories that I didn't like had some of the more inciteful interviews of the authors, telling what they thought worked and why. I know what works in the stories I like, but its nice to hear why an author wrote something the way they did, especially if you don't like it.

As someone who writes in my spare time, it was really nice to see what pros think of thier early work... and in some cases it means all might not be lost.

Certainly, there are some flawed stories in this collection (for me, the worst was the Salvatore offering). However, the majority were surprisingly enjoyable, considering the premise. And I found the Q/A sections a valuable insight into the process of many great authors.
One note: some of the variance in quality may be attributed to the fact that these are first-published short stories, so some of the writers may have published novels prior to what is presented here.

I have read all of the Planet Stories offerings so far. This one is by far the worst. Several of the offerings (Bova, Niven) were readable. Many were just horrible (to be polite). This is one of those things that seems like a good idea, but I really don't want to read any writers' offerings when they really were not very good. If you do another one of these, I will be tempted to do a skip on my subscription to avoid such horrible writing.

Before They were Giants is an anthology without a theme, a collection of the "first published" works of a wide range of living SF writers. There are 15 short stories in about 200 pages, which includes a brief questionnaire with answers by each author (itself generally two or three pages long). As a result, there is a real grab-bag of things here, with "sci-fi" being pretty widely interpreted and the authors involved ranging from Piers Anthony to China Mieville.

As a result, by operation of the simple law of averages, there are bound to be a few things here you like. The bad news is, its probable there will be quite a bit more you either dislike or are indifferent to. Its also billed as a primer for aspiring writers - which it may very be of some use as, I have no idea - but as a result it also straddles into teachiness in places at the expense of fun. Throw in the fact that this is, by definition, the rawest works of the authors involved, and the book becomes of more use as a curiosity striving for "importance" than a book trying to be "fun".

Two and a half stars is probably fairer than two, but I can't do that, and I cant give it three stars just for meaning well and trying real hard.