Eight-year-old Horty Bluett is mocked by his classmates & abused by his adoptive parents until the day his father severs three of his fingers. He runs away, taking only a gem-eyed doll he calls Junky, & joins a carnival. Finding acceptance at last, Horty never dreams that Junky is more than a toy...
Contents: Case and the Dreamer (1973) If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister? (1967) When You Care, When You Love (1962)
I think the only meaningful ratings on GR are *, **, and *****. Those are pretty clear: “I disliked it”, “it was okay”, and “it was amazing”. *** and **** exist in that intermediate stage between “meh” (**) and “wow” (*****). “I liked it” and “I really liked it”. WTF? How exactly do I differentia...
A card with the letter "J" on it appeared in Robert York's mail, and a day later he was dead. Then another card showed up, and Ellery Queen knew he was up against a brilliant killer who made a game of death by warning his victims. The only clue was the signature "Y" and Ellery had to find him and...
Sci-fi master Theodore Sturgeon wrote stories with power and freshness, and in telling them created a broader understanding of humanity—a legacy for readers and writers to mine for generations. Along with the title story, the collection includes stories written between 1953 and 1955, Sturgeon's g...
This book contains ten major stories by the master of science fiction, fantasy, and horror written during the 1960s. The controversial "If All Men We re Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?" shows the author's technique of "ask the next question" used in a way that shatters social conve...
This whole collection felt as if it was almost there. Almost moving; almost memorable; almost making me think and rethink.I almost really liked it.But I'm absolutely looking forward to the next one. Because the direction has been up and up.My impressions as I read:~ Recently, in one of my Bulgari...
The Ultimate Egoist, the first volume of The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, contains the late author's earliest work, written from 1937 to 1940. Although Sturgeon's reach was limited to the lengths of the short story and novelette, his influence was strongly felt by even the most original...
It is a marvel to behold, how Sturgeon the apprentice burst into the master Sturgeon. Bang at the start of the book too: smiling at you along with Robin English from "Maturity."(However, this may be an exaggeration. Sturgeon did rewrite the second half of "Maturity" several years later, to make i...
"Baby Is Three" is the sixth volume in the series devoted to the complete works of one of science fiction's titans. Like others in the series, this one includes extensive notes and background information on each story by editor Paul Williams. The early 1950s, during which this material was writte...
In the 1978 horror movie "Martin," writer/director George A. Romero presented us with a young man who enjoys killing people and drinking their blood, but who may or may not be a so-called "vampire"; the film is wonderfully ambiguous all the way down the line on that score. Seventeen years before ...
A good collection of short stories by Theodore Sturgeon, the real-life prototype for Vonnegut's Kilgore Trout. I have never discovered what Sturgeon thought about the joke. He seems to have been a nice guy, so maybe he took it in good part.The story I liked best was the first one, "Bright Segment...
Written between 1955 and 1957, the 15 stories in And Now the News ... include five previously uncollected stories along with five well-known works, two cowritten with genre legend Robert Heinlein. Spanning his most creative period, these tales show why Sturgeon won every science fiction award giv...
Note: Contrary to popular perception, this novel is NOT about a group of space-faring bankers that recklessly squander their resources and then cabal with the shadowy interstellar governing overlords to rape the cosmic taxpayers of their hard-earned wealth. That kind of story would just be too fa...
The Perfect Host" is the fifth volume of "The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon," a highly acclaimed series that brings together all the short stories of one of hte finest science ficiton and fantasy writers of the century. Included in this volume are such major works as "Die Maestro Die!," "...
Summary (From the publisher): The 22nd Century. Mankind is free from the age-old misery and poverty that have kept it in bondage, free to create a new world, to explore the universe, to confront the mysteries of human existence. Russia's greatest S-F writeres, Arkday and Boris Strugatsky, have p...
Rosewater. Trout would subsequently make cameo appearances in several more of my books, and in 1973 would star in Breakfast of Champions. Persons alert for wordplay noticed that Trout and Theodore Sturgeon were both named for fish, and that their first names ended with “ore.” They asked me if my ...
I asked as the petty officer left the mess room. “Nothing,” said the second officer. “Nothing at all.” “What do you carry him for, then?” The second was a man in his middle forties with a very nice grin. He used it now. “We carry him just in case,” he said. “He’s the chemical supervisor. He stand...
It never lasts. I guess I don’t look the part. Charon, you’ll remember, was the somber ferryman who steered the boat across the River Styx, taking the departed souls over to the Other Side. He’s usually pictured as a grim, taciturn character, tall and gaunt. I get called Charon, but that’s not wh...
It’s terrifying at first, of course—all that spangled blackness, and the sense of disorientation. Your guts never get used to sustained free fall, and you feel, when you look out, that every direction is up, which is natural, or that every direction is down, which is sheer horror. But you don’t s...
Deeming had stopped at a crosswalk—he lived in one of the few parts of town where streets still crossed on the same level and was waiting for the light to change, when on the post by his head, right at eye level, a hand appeared. It wore a thin gold band and a watch. It was the watch that made hi...
THE ADMIRAL GLANCED at the clock. The Captain entered and laid the manual down on the desk. “Right on time.” He leaned a little sidewise and tried to peer around the captain. “Where’s your diving detail?” “I’m the diving detail,” said Crane. &...
Not in this life!”) and the doorman welcomed me so warmly I almost forgave Sue for moving into a place that had a doorman. And then the elevator and then Sue. You have to be away a long time, a long way, to miss someone like that, and me, I’d been farther away than anyone ought to be for too long...
And some organize into superentities like a beehive or a slime-mold so that they live plurally to become singular, and some have even more singular ideas of plurality. Now, no matter how an organized culture of intelligent beings is put together or where, regardless of what it’s made of or how it...
A question like that requires deep thought, and a true insight into the feminine mind. Yes indeed, my boy, I’m your man. You want to know just what to do when you have been spending alternate periods of spare time with two sweet young things, and a third pulls her lovely self over your horizon. Y...
HE LOOKED at his left hand, at the three stubs of fingers which rose, like unspread mushrooms, from his knuckles, touched the scar-tissue around them with his other hand, and he laughed. He rose from the studio couch and crossed the wide room to the cheval glass, to stare at his face, to stand ba...
murmured Perk. “Truly, an honor and a privilege.” He didn’t know what to do with his hands, so he laid them against his side-seams. This brought him to parade attention, and the old Chief hadn’t ordered it, so he set his shine-to-wincing boots slightly apart. The old Chief hadn’t said “At ease!” ...
These creatures were wonderful. They were one part fanatic, one part genius, a dash of childlike wonderment, and two buckets full of trial-and-error. Those were the days when you could get your picture in the paper for building a crystal set in something smaller and more foolish than the characte...
Volume III: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon Crossfire 2 July 1944 DEAR— Before me is a bottle of cognac … half full. I have drunk half the bottle. It is young. It burns. It is good. I sit now in a large kitchen, the most important room of this particular farm house, and look out to a ya...
—John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel Midafternoon and he came to a fork in the road. Just like the rest of us in all our afternoons, whether we know it at the time or not. Younger Macleish liked the left fork. His horse’s sleepy feet preferred the right, a bit downgrade as it was, and Macleish th...
IT’S THE KIND of thing you wonder about, so I went and asked him at the end of the number. “How do you get to whip the skins in the big time?” he repeated, and grinned at his sweating combo. He racked his sticks. “Take ten,” he called to the boys, and then turned back to me. “Lead me to a cola wi...