2011 Reading #52: Thunder and Roses: Volume IV: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon
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. I've decided to jump from working my way through Patricia Highsmith's body of work to working my way through Sturgeon; Highsmith was really starting to bring me down, and I have eight of these volumes at home (and there are five more out there). I like Sturgeon's wit, his clarity of prose and vision, his off-kilter way of coming at genre; my favorite story in this collection is "Hurricane Trio," which is only SF in an oblique way. I struggle somewhat with the way he writes about women. On the one hand, as a Golden Age SF guy the mere fact that he writes about women as anything other than romantic props puts him ahead of the game, and the women in Sturgeon's stories are often smart--scientists, like Peg in "Maturity" or Alastair in "Tiny and the Monster," shrewd businesswomen like Phyllis in "Memory." On the other hand, they are always gorgeous and exceptionally vulnerable to falling for Sturgeon's men, and sometimes there's an undercurrent of comeuppance in the narrative, as if Sturgeon was working through some unspoken resentment towards a particular sort of women. On the whole I think the results are mixed, and considering the time when he was writing, fairly progressive. And these are stories from pretty early in his career, still, so I look forward to reading the rest.
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. I've decided to jump from working my way through Patricia Highsmith's body of work to working my way through Sturgeon; Highsmith was really starting to bring me down, and I have eight of these volumes at home (and there are five more out there). I like Sturgeon's wit, his clarity of prose and vision, his off-kilter way of coming at genre; my favorite story in this collection is "Hurricane Trio," which is only SF in an oblique way. I struggle somewhat with the way he writes about women. On the one hand, as a Golden Age SF guy the mere fact that he writes about women as anything other than romantic props puts him ahead of the game, and the women in Sturgeon's stories are often smart--scientists, like Peg in "Maturity" or Alastair in "Tiny and the Monster," shrewd businesswomen like Phyllis in "Memory." On the other hand, they are always gorgeous and exceptionally vulnerable to falling for Sturgeon's men, and sometimes there's an undercurrent of comeuppance in the narrative, as if Sturgeon was working through some unspoken resentment towards a particular sort of women. On the whole I think the results are mixed, and considering the time when he was writing, fairly progressive. And these are stories from pretty early in his career, still, so I look forward to reading the rest.