The Complete short stories of Theodore Sturgeon Vol. 1: The Ultimate Egoist
These volumes feature his stories in roughly chronological order, so this is his very earliest work. A good chunk of the stories are just crummy filler items for newspapers. Nothing great, but a few interesting items:
"Bianca's Hands" is a horror story that has an almost southern gothic feel to it. "Fluffy" and "Cellmate" are ok in a pulpy Weird Tales sort of way. "The Ultimate Egoist" has an interesting premise (for its time) but would have been better if it had been played for laughs or as a straight horror story.
The Complete short stories of Theodore Sturgeon Vol. 8: Bright Segment.
I think a lot of Sturgeon's later stories are a tad too long. The title story of this collection for example. This book contains a few of his more famous stories like the unfortunately titled Twink, as well as To Here and Easel, When You're Smiling, and Bulkhead. Not that crazy about any of them.
Oddly enough, I think the
Riddle of Ragnarok is probably my favorite of the bunch. The first half is a retelling of the Death of Baldur, and the second half is about the Ravens of Odin solving the murder mystery. I liked it, but my childhood love of Thor comics may be clouding my judgment.
The Fredric Brown Megapack.
"The Answer" is my favorite of this collection of 33 stories. It's similar to a more famous Isaac Asimov story, but actually preceded it.
Other stories of note: Two "joke" stories "Earthmen Bearing Gifts" and "Puppet Show" are fun. "House of Mirrors" has a cool premise. "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" is a neat little "weird" tale.
I'm also still reading Hugo nominated short stories. Most still aren't that great but I did read a good one called "Tideline" by Elizabeth Bear. Ray Bradbury's "The Dragon" is another Hugo nominated story that I read recently; not bad. And speaking of dragons, I also read a Harlan Ellison story called "Delusions For a Dragon Slayer." I wasn't too crazy about it at first, but it keeps popping back into my mind so I may have to reevaluate my opinion of it.
Random shorts:
"Adam and No Eve" is another interesting short story by Alfred Bester.
"High Weir" by Samuel R. Delany didn't really grab me.
I also listened to a cool episode of Mindwebs called Rust based on a story from 1939. The saddest story about killer robots you will ever hear. Here's a link:
https://archive.org/details/MindWebs_201410
Not exactly sci-fi or fantasy, but I listened to a cool podcast episode called "20 Simple Steps To Ventriloquism" a few days ago and I thought it was pretty neat. The podcast was called "Pseudopod" and they specialize in horror short fiction. Here's a link:
http://pseudopod.org/2015/04/09/pseu...ventriloquism/