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", which isn't science-fiction at all. The protagonist, a mentally subnormal janitor, finds an attractive young woman lying in front of his house. She's apparently been sliced up and left to bleed to death. He brings her in, and nurses her back to life. He has a lot of practical skills, and the process is described in great detail, from his perspective. "We fix," he murmurs, as he patches her up. He's happy.She's very grateful; it's a long time since anyone's been nice to her. She's smart and street-wise. It transpires that she tried to double-cross someone in a drug deal: she tries to explain to him what happened, he doesn't understand. One night, she offers him sex. He isn't interested, or even clear about what she's offering. She's sad. He doesn't know why, and tries clumsily to comfort her.One day, she says she has to leave. She's quite healed; she can't stay for ever. He's desolated. He'll have no reason to live any more. She feels terrible about it. He holds out his arms for a farewell embrace. She runs towards him, and doesn't see what he's holding in his hand. He crashes the heavy flat-iron into the back of her head.As she lies bleeding on the floor, he gets out his things. "We fix!" he says happily.I've always thought that this simple and unpretentious story makes a certain point about relationships better than many far more ambitious works of literature.
This is a review-in-progress, which means that I will post short reviews of each story as I read them. I don't tend to read a whole shortstory collection after I've begun it, I might return to it again and again, slowly digging my way through the (hopefully) wonderful stories.It should also be known that I am a big fan of Theodore Sturgeon.Bright Segment (27 pages) is the story about how a lonely (and simple) man finds a woman on the streets, left to die. She is in a bad shape and we, as the main character, wonders what has happened to her. This, as most TS stories, is a story with a twist. Who is the man that has found her, and why is he so bend on "fixing" her... even when she really doesn't need fixing. A dark read that takes you deep into the mind of a man...
