2011 Reading #60: The Perfect Host: Volume V: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon

[snurri]

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
51. What I Didn't See and Other Stories by Karen Joy Fowler.
52. Thunder and Roses: Volume IV: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon.
53. Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler.
54. Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison.
55. Angela Davis: An Autobiography.
56. Always Coming Home by

Comments

[tim_pratt]

I love "Die, Maestro, Die!" I had a character listening to a CD of Lutch Crawford and his Gone Geese in my first novel.

We should talk Sturgeon sometime. He's my favorite short story writer (which isn't to say I don't sometimes find his work problematic in various ways).

[snurri]

We should! Overall I really like his stuff; I think it's just that reading ALL the stories in this way rather than in more of a greatest-hits-collection sort of way makes the varied quality of his work more apparent. I have a lot more of him to read, too.

[tim_pratt]

I'd read most of his collections before I started in on the big Collected Stories, but yeah, it's interesting in those to see how he returns again and again to certain themes and subjects, and how some stories are like try-outs for ideas he did much better later. (The whole notion of the gestalt in "Die, Maestro, Die!" prefigures his classic novel/fix-up "More than Human", for instance.)

[snurri]

I read More Than Human quite some time ago and loved it; it's one of the reasons that I revere Sturgeon. I should read it again.