Theodore Sturgeon – författare

This fourth volume of Theodore Sturgeon''s Complete Stories publishes the work of 1946-1948, wen Sturgeon''s early popularity among science fiction readers crystallized into a lasting reputation among a wider group of readers. "Maturity" and "Thunder and Roses" are the best-known of the stories in this period. "It Wasn''t Syzygy" display''s Sturgeon''s interest in psychological themes. "The Professor''s Teddy Bear" is an early prototype of the modern "horror story" as practiced by Clive Baker, Stephen King and many others.In these years Sturgeon was recovering from the failure of his first marriage and a severe case of "writer''s block". In March 1947 his luck turned around: a story he had failed to sell earlier won a short story contest sponsored by the prominent British magazine, Argosy, with the then-enormous prize of $1000. Later Sturgeon credited this event for restoring his faith in himself as a writer. The same year "Maturity" and "Thunder and Roses" were received with tremendous enthusiasm by his peers. Ray Bradbury, a few years short of his own success, wrote to Sturgeon in February 1947:"Ted, I hate you!...MATURITY...is a damned nice story. Your sense of humour, sir, is incredible. I don''t believe you''ve written a bad story yet; I don''t think you ever will. This is not log-rolling, by God; I only speak the truth. I predict you''ll be selling at least six stories a year to Collier''s and The Post before long. You have the touch." A month later, the day he learned he''d won the contest, Sturgeon wrote to his ex-wife, "It''s more than a thousand dollars. The curse is off with me. My faith in [the story''s] quality and my own is restored, and I don''t think that I shall ever again experience that mystic diffidence and childish astonishment when one of my stories sells or is anthologized. I know now why they do, and I''m proud of it, and I know how to use it."This fourth volume also features a major "undiscovered" story, "Wham Bop!", from an obscure youth magazine in 1947. It may be one of the finest fictional portraits of a 1940s jazz band in American letters.Additional delicacies awaiting the Sturgeon fan in Thunder and Roses are his first Western Story, "Well Spiced", and a UFO saga, "The Sky Was Full of Ships", written in 1947 and set in the Southwest. It could well be the true story of the Roswell incident.

Theodore Sturgeon was a model for his friend Kurt Vonnegut''s legendary character Kilgore Trout, and his work was an acknowledged influence on important younger writers from Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg to Stephen King and Octavia Butler. His work has long been deeply appreciated for its sardonic sensibility, dazzling wordplay, conceptual brilliance, memorable characters, and unsparing treatment of social issues such as sex, war, and marginalized members of society. Sturgeon also authored several episodes of the original Star Trek TV series and originated the Vulcan phrase "Live long and prosper."This twelfth volume of his complete short stories includes classic works such as the award-winning title story, which won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 1971, as well as "Case and the Dreamer," a well-crafted tale of an encounter with a trans-spatial being that is also a meditation on love, and "The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff," a creative exploration of the human ability to achieve self-realization in response to crisis.

James Blish called him the "finest conscious artist science fiction ever produced." Kurt Vonnegut based the famous character Kilgore Trout on him. And such luminaries as Harlan Ellison, Stephen King, and Octavia Butler have hailed him as a mentor. Theodore Sturgeon was both a popular favorite and a writer''s writer, carving out a singular place in the literary landscape based on his masterful wordplay, conceptual daring, and narrative drive. Sturgeon''s sardonic sensibility and his skill at interweaving important social issues such as sex-including gay themes-and war into his stories are evident in all of his work, regardless of genre.Case and the Dreamer displays Sturgeon''s gifts at their peak. The book brings together his last stories, written between 1972 and 1983. They include "The Country of Afterward," a sexually explicit story Sturgeon had been unable to write earlier in his career, and the title story, about an encounter with a transpatial being that is also a meditation on love. Several previously unpublished stories are included, as well as his final one, "Grizzly," a poignant take on the lung disease that killed him two years later.

This is the strange tale of Horty, a little boy who ran away from home and took refuge in the bizarre world of the carnival. With him went his favourite toy - an old jack-in-the-box whose jewelled eyes sparkled and shone, hypnotic in their brilliance.And among the freaks and oddities of the sideshows he found friends - ''jewel'' people like him, who tried to protect him from the terrible secret of his existence .

All alone: an idiot boy, a runaway girl, a severely retarded baby, and twin girls with a vocabulary of two words between them. Yet once they are mysteriously drawn together this collection of misfits becomes something very, very different from the rest of humanity.This intensely written and moving novel is an extraordinary vision of humanity''s next step.First published in 1952, More Than Human won the Retro Hugo Award for Best Novel.

It came from outer space . . .The Medusa, the intergalactic conqueror, a hive-like being with a consuming appetite to absorb all life in the universe.Now the Medusa had reached Earth. It had taken control of its first human being. Through him it would possess all his fellows.But there was one thing the Medusa had not reckoned on. One tiny factor in the complex human equation. A desperate last chance for the stubborn and independent creature known as Man to save himself . . .

The Ledom had made a world without war, without fear - a world in which each individual was free to love, to create, to explore . . .The Ledom, a gentle and kindly new race, made their twentieth-century guest, Charlie Johns, welcome to their paradise.Charlie thought he was in heaven. But then he found out just where - and when - he was . . . an Eden turned into a nightmare!

From "one of the greatest writers of science fiction and fantasy who ever lived" (Stephen King) here is a masterpiece of fiction - a haunting, meaningful and at times erotic novel that describes a wonderous transformation that takes place in an American town when a charismatic, Christ-like figure mysteriously appears in its midst.Godbody - sweetly innocent, as naked of guile as he is of worldly trappings - has returned to remind mankind of what it has lost. He will touch only a few lives before his preordained end, but they will be forever transformed. As one by one the members of a small rural town fall under Godbody''s spell, the burdens that had weighed down on them disappear, and a new vision of life as it can - and should - be suddenly reveals itself to them.