Phoenix in the Ashes is an amazing collection of Ms. Vinge's short stories. Each story has an afterword written by Ms. Vinge, which gives the reader insight, into what inspired that particular tale, which I found to be a very pleasant experience. This collection is something any fan of Ms. Vinge must get, unfortunately at this time it is out of print. One story in particular flashes back on Cat from the Catspaw, Psion, Dreamfall series, and is set in the time between Psion and Catspaw when our hero is recovering from the mental-psionic breakdown he suffered because of his time spent in the Telhassium mines of the Federation. This interlude in Cat's life is just one of six tales included in this collection. The other five range all the way from a desolate future Earth, where technology is considered to be part of the evil spirits (Phoenix in the Ashes), to a sort of world where humans who can see clearly or even hear are considered "blessed" or "gifted" and has an incredibly suprising plot(Mother and Child). All the stories in this collection have characters of depth and intriguing story lines, in spite of the short length. There is no way to sum up this collection as each story is an individual gem, of a different color and cut set in the ring of adaptation and survival