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quoththegirl's review
3.0
A strange collection of three stories by an author that, according to the inside flap, "truly needs no introduction." I'm going to beg to differ, there; I'd never heard of Sturgeon before I was given this book in a batch of old scifi books, and I thought I knew my classic scifi authors. Evidently not as well as I thought! Turns out Sturgeon wrote several Star Trek episodes and a host of classic scifi stories and novels.
The first story in this collection by the same name was intriguing and quite well done, aside from some odd pacing. The second was a bizarre thought experiment of what a culture might be like when it's missing one crucial taboo. (No spoilers.) The third had a similar "what the heck?" feel as the second but was undeniably creative, and I found myself mulling it over long after I'd turned the last page. All three stories felt...well, strange, though not necessarily in a bad way. I may need to try some more short stories by Sturgeon.
The first story in this collection by the same name was intriguing and quite well done, aside from some odd pacing. The second was a bizarre thought experiment of what a culture might be like when it's missing one crucial taboo. (No spoilers.) The third had a similar "what the heck?" feel as the second but was undeniably creative, and I found myself mulling it over long after I'd turned the last page. All three stories felt...well, strange, though not necessarily in a bad way. I may need to try some more short stories by Sturgeon.
rubel's review
4.0
Three solid Sturgeon stories, each around 50 pages long--from '62, '67, and '72. The best thing about Sturgeon IMO is not that he does his job as an inventive science fiction storyteller by providing the ideas and set pieces that define his chosen genre. Rather, it's his characters, a style closer to Spider Robinson than their dryer cousins, and finally the charm with which he delivers his stories. He takes his readers seriously and invites them in on the gag, on the secret.
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