Science fiction author John Clute called Souls in Metal a "jalopy of a book," and considered the editor borderline illiterate.
John Clute considered the collection a "jalopy of a book," an "atrocious little money-spinner," whose contents could not have "required more than a modicum of research to uncover." Of the editor, he wrote "In general his editorial comments are among the most illiterate ever printed, with high-school syntax howlers and unintended neologisms breeding together ... like fruit flies in Hiroshima, nor on decipherment is what he says about his assemblage of stories even interestingly false." John Frederick Clute (born 12 September 1940) is a Canadian-born author and critic specializing in science fiction and fantasy literature who has lived in both England and the United States since 1969. 
