I read a great anthology of short stories when I was a teenager and I'm trying to track down who wrote them - the book is long gone unfortunately. I'm pretty sure all the stories were by the same author. It would have been published in the early 80's or late 70's, I think.
Here are some of the stories I can remember:
* Humans have become the administrators of a gambling plant for the whole galaxy - earth was destroyed or something. There is the chief Dude who has to fight fire with all these crazy aliens betting on all sorts of weird sports and games that take place on the planet. The climax of the story involved an Alien species from outside of the galaxy wanting in on the action - or something to that effect. Ring any bells anyone???
* A story was about genetic engineering where everyone can completely change their genome. People live out their lives changing to different forms and animals. However there is a constant that limits how long people can live and they cannot push passed that, until they find this alien genome - on Jupiter I think - and that allows then to live longer than a human life span, the alien gnome communicates with light signals through insect like eyes.
All very vague I know. Any idea's let me know.
Thanks
