Customer Reviews

Starshine

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It's a very dated collection of short stories:

Derm Fool

The Haunt

Artnan Process

The World Well Lost

The Pod and the Barrier

How to Kill Aunty

With the exception Artnan Process, The World Well Lost and The Pod and the Barrier, the stories are juvenile, perhaps the book might be aimed at that audience. They involve plots where the character tries to out think someone else, usually with the simple motive "because I can." There's no depth whatsoever to these juvenile short stories.

The one story out of all of them that stand out among the rest is The Pod and the Barrier. In this story, spacefarers confront a barrier erected by an alien civilization, but warms the humans not to cross into it. They try to outwit the barrier in numerous ways. However, the ending involves a "not so witty" solution- a let down for such a promising short story.

The World Well Lost has an interesting history. The first editor to receive the story (many years ago) thought the story so obscene or obsurd and called other editors to tell them to deny its printing. It's a shocking plot considering the era it was printed it.

This is a book with a collection of short stories that deal with issues of love, exploration and discovery, hate, appearances and the unknown plus many other areas and ideas... It is an interesting book that holds the reader as you often reflect on what is said.. I found it interesting and entertaining.

There have been numerous paperback iterations of this anthology, which features stories ranging in time from 1940 and 'Derm Fool', on up to 1961 and 'How to Kill Aunty'. Those unwitting purchasers who expect an anthology of provocative, mid-60s New Wave tales by Sturgeon are going to be disappointed.

To be fair to Sturgeon, many tales by other authors, released in the SF literature during the interval 1940 - 1961, suffer from the same faults and defects present in the stories in 'Starshine': excessive wordiness, poorly written dialogue, internal monologues overloaded with run-on sentences, and unimaginative re-workings of the same narrow set of themes.

The anthology opens with `Derm Fool' (1940) about a regular joe caught in a quirky situation; there is a swell dame he needs to impress.

`The Haunt' (1941) is also about a regular joe who is trying to impress a swell dame; the plan involves a putative haunted house.

`Artnan Process' (1941) deals with two capable Earthmen sent to a remote planet to discover the secret of an energy conversion process. There is an emphasis on humor.

`The World Well Lost' (1953): two alien lovebirds /refugees come to Earth; placating their planet of origin requires deporting them back home, an act that troubles a crew member aboard the deportation ship. The story's clumsy, obtuse prose overwhelms its 'daring' subtext.

`The Pod and the Barrier' (1957): a starship crew must venture to breach a deadly force field. Much angst and drama among the crew.

`How to Kill Aunty' (1961): a bedridden old lady is engaged in a quiet, vicious war of wits with her sulking, homicidal nephew / estate inheritor.

Even determined Nostalgists are going to find little to be excited about in 'Starshine'.

I remember Harlan Ellison writing about his dead friends in Angry Candy and being particularly angry with an obituary writer that didn't know Theodore Sturgeon. After reading this book, I can see why. Sturgeon was one of those strange brilliant writers that managed to push the genre past the pure science/theoretical/rocket ship ghetto. His characters are slightly borsht belt (even lower east side) but his grasp of the human experience is excellent.

While many of these stories are the genre tropes - the weak man trying to kill his overbearing aunt, the space con artists against the slightly befuddled aliens, the haunted house - they manage to feel fresh under the expert hand of Sturgeon.

Granted, once the book is over you forget it, but it's wonderful light reading and deserves classic status much more than the current batch of "classics" from that era (no I didn't like Saul Bellow. I found Seize the Day (Penguin Classics) a plodding mess. And don't even get me started on Arthur Miller)