The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume X: The Man Who Lost the Sea

The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon #10

by Theodore Sturgeon, Jonathan Lethem (Foreword), Paul Williams (Editor)

By the winner of the Hugo, the Nebula, and the World Fantasy Life Achievement Awards, this latest volume finds Theodore Sturgeon in fine form as he gains recognition for the first time as a literary short story writer. Written between 1957 and 1960, when Sturgeon and his family lived in both America and Grenada, finally settling in Woodstock, New York, these stories reflect his increasing preference for psychology over ray guns. Stories such as "The Man Who Told Lies," "A Touch of Strange," and "It Opens the Sky" show influences as diverse as William Faulkner and John Dos Passos. Always in touch with the zeitgeist, Sturgeon takes on the Russian Sputnik launches of 1957 with "The Man Who Lost the Sea," switching the scene to Mars and injecting his trademark mordancy and vivid wordplay into the proceedings. These mature stories also don't stint on the scares, as "The Graveyard Reader"—one of Boris Karloff's favorite stories—shows. Acclaimed novelist Jonathan Lethem's foreword neatly summarizes Sturgeon's considerable achievement here.

A Crime For Llewellyn
It Opens the Sky
A Touch of Strange
The Comedian's Children
The Graveyard Reader
The Man Who Told Lies
The Man Who Lost the Sea
The Man Who Figured Everything (with Don Ward)
Like Young
Night Ride
Need
How to Kill Aunty
Tandy's Story

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Collections, Speculative Fiction, Fiction

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 28, 2005

About the author

Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) is considered one of the godfathers of contemporary science fiction and dark fantasy. The author of numerous acclaimed short stories and novels, among them the classics More Than Human, Venus Plus X, and To Marry Medusa, Sturgeon also wrote for television and holds among his credits two episodes of the original 1960s Star Trek series, for which he created the Vulcan mating ritual and the expression "Live long and prosper." He is also credited as the inspiration for Kurt Vonnegut's recurring fictional character Kilgore Trout.

Sturgeon is the recipient of the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the International Fantasy Award. In 2000, he was posthumously honored with a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement.

Reviews

[Kalin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes, I feel too dumb to say anything meaningful about Theodore Sturgeon. What is there to add to what he's already told us?

(Well, perhaps there is something--in those nineteen forewords by his fellow masters, the writers who've learnt from him one way or another. However, I'm not reading any of those until I finish the whole series; I don't want them to influence my impressions here.)

Anyway *sigh*, this collection resonated with me more than any of the previous nine, and here are the resonances I could capture in words:

https://choveshkata.net/forum/viewtop...

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have something of a soft spot for a good short story. While I certainly recognize the value of a good novel, there is something about a well-written short story, where brevity is born of necessity, and the crescendos are sharp and punctuated, that stays with me long after reading. The masters of this craft have the ability to make characters and settings instantly recognizable, in the general feel if not necessarily the specifics, using the reader's preconceptions to immerse them in the flow of the story before turning those notions on their head at the last minute. Or by following those conceptions to their logical, if often unexpected, conclusion. Often the last paragraph, if not the last sentence, is the key to the whole work, and the best authors will deftly reach through the page and snatch your breath away. Such was my experience as I was working through an anthology of science fiction short stories and came across a little gem by Theodore Sturgeon.

The story in question is the "title track" of this volume of Sturgeon's collected works, "The Man Who Lost the Sea", and is, perhaps, the finest example of the format which I can offer. Sturgeon jumps right in with, "Say you're this kid, and one dark night you're running along the cold sand..." and away he goes, using rhythmic, repetitious language that rolls and crashes like surf on a beach. And with each wave of understanding, the reader's awareness climbs just a bit higher until, deafeningly, the high-water mark is reached, the sandcastle washes away, and the heartbreaking reality becomes achingly clear. Elegant and haunting, here the maestro is in rare form.

Having not read any other Sturgeon, and on the strength of just this story, I decided to pick up the volume of his works in which it was contained, in the hope that his other work would even come close. And I wasn't at all disappointed. The stories range from hopeful and uplifting ("It Opens the Sky") to quietly introspective ("The Graveyard Reader") to hilariously dark ("How to Kill Aunty"), but all are accomplished with the same deft characterization of humanity. The only miss here is "Night Ride", a short murder mystery involving a high school basketball team. Not that there's anything particularly egregious, just that amidst the brilliance that surrounds it, this one is fairly forgettable.

As I've indicated above, being that the publishers are collecting Sturgeon's short fiction chronologically, not everything here falls in the science fiction genre. "The Man Who Figured Everything" is set in the Old West, while "A Crime For Llewellyn" has a '60's urban feel and an ironic thread worthy of the best of O Henry. In "Need" the other true standout of the collection, the supernatural element is at first only hinted at, but is subtly developed such that by the time the conflicting forces are resolved, the reader has already guessed the truth, and nods in approval. This story is a shining example of Sturgeon's ability to fully humanize his characters; their flaws and foibles drive the plot, yes, but do so without rendering them stilted or one-dimensional. If only for this one alone, my decision to pick up this volume was a success.

I do have one quibble, not with the writing but with the edition itself; I noticed an annoyingly high number of distracting typographical errors. One or two I might shrug off, but for a book of just over 300 pages to contain a dozen or so indicates just plain carelessness. This may be corrected in later editions, but in the mean time don't let this stop you from adding the book to your collection; the intellectual quality of Sturgeon's prose more than makes up for it. I will certainly be picking up a few others in the series, now that I have quite a high appreciation for the man and his work. And I will expect nothing less than the wondrously memorable stories to be found in this one.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is, almost, a "best of" Sturgeon, not only because it contains so much of Theodore Sturgeon's best work, but also because there is so little that is not superior fiction. As I list the contents, I am including information about the original publication of each of these stories, because there is more variety not just in sources but in types of sources than in other books in this series.


CONTENTS


◾Foreward by Jonathan Lethem


▪️"A Crime for Llewellyn"
Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, October, 1957

▪️"It Opens the Sky"
Venture Science Fiction, November, 1957

▪️"A Touch of Strange"
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January, 1958

▪️"The Comedian's Children"
Venture Science Fiction, May, 1958

▪️"The Graveyard Reader"
The Graveyard Reader, anthology edited by Groff Conklin, 1958

▪️"The Man Who Told Lies" (under the pseudonym Billy Watson, as part of a feature called "Quintet")
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September, 1959

▪️"The Man Who Lost the Sea"
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October, 1959

▪️"The Man Who Figured Everything" (written with Don Ward)
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, January, 1960

▪️"Like Young"
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March, 1960

▪️"Night Ride"
Keyhole Mystery Magazine, June, 1960

▪️"Need"
Beyond, collection of short stories by Sturgeon, July, 1960

▪️"How to Kill Aunty"
Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, March, 1961

▪️"Tandy's Story"
Galaxy Science Fiction, April, 1961


◾Story Notes by Paul Williams


Five science fiction stories (I am calling "Like Young" science fiction, although it borders on fantasy), four fantasy stories, three mystery stories, and a hybrid Western mystery story.

"Quintet" was an interesting stunt run in the September, 1959 issue of F&SF. The magazine ran five short entries, two poems and three short-short stories. It said that at least one was written by a child under 12 and at least one was written by a well-known science fiction/fantasy writer. The authors named as having possibly written stories were Sturgeon, Jane Rice, Damon Knight, and Alfred Bester. The professional writers were, of course, trying to make their writing seem like that of children. (Two of the five entries really were by children; the others were by Sturgeon, Rice, and Bester.)

Sturgeon's story was "The Man Who Told Lies," published under the pseudonym Billy Watson. It is about a man who lied so consistently that when he did tell the truth, no one believed him. He meets an obliging magician who says that he can change this.

The first sentence of the story is:

Once there was a man who all the time told lies and everybody hated him and diden't trust him even when he said what time it is they woulden't believe him so one day the craziest thing hapened he was driving his car to work in the morning, and his car slipped on a banana peal only it was reely a whole bunch of banana peals where a garbage truck had a accident and spilled on the road so he cracked a lampost.

I have very minimal experience with reading material written by children but I think that this sounds reasonably convincing.

The poorest story in the book is "Night Ride," a high school basketball/problem with a bully/mystery story. I don't see anything in this story that makes me think of Sturgeon.

The other two contemporary (as of when they first appeared, that is) mysteries, "A Crime for Llewellyn" and "How to Kill Aunty," are both very much better. "A Crime for Llewellyn" strikes closer to home for me because the extreme-nonentity main character has spent his life as a clerk in a hospital. I held a similar position for much too long. I don't identify with Llewellyn (I hope), but I certainly worked with some Llewellyn-ish folks.

(I need to add that most of the hospital clerks I knew were not at all like Llewellyn. However, Llewellyn is not the only hospital clerk to be similarly memorialized. Harvey Pekar, author of the largely autobiographical American Splendor series, worked for years as a hospital records clerk. In Ingmar Bergman's film The Serpent's Egg, Abel Rosenberg, an American Jew in Germany in the 1920's as the Nazi regime was incubating, finds his life becoming increasingly horrible. Finally he is forced to take a job so lowly that just the mention of it brings disgust; he becomes a hospital records clerk.)

Llewellyn is a rather dim fellow who treasures a secret. He is a man whose life has been practically without sin of any kind. But, unknown to any of his co-workers, Llewellyn lives with a woman (to whom Sturgeon gives the unfortunate name "Ivy Shoots"). Llewellyn and Ivy live in sin, and this adds a necessary element to his life.

In "How to Kill Aunty" (originally published as "How to Kill Your Aunty"), another hapless man lives with his bedridden aunt, whose spine was broken in an accident. Well, perhaps "accident" is the wrong term; perhaps she was injured deliberately. After all, she had broken up her nephew's romance with a housemaid.

And what is that nephew like? The aunt muses:

Squirrels she detested, and unpunctuality, physical sloppiness, rice pudding, greed, advertising (especially TV commercials, of which she saw a great many), dull-wittedness and Hubert. Hubert, her nephew, was not a dish of rice pudding nor a squirrel, but he embodied everything else on the list.

Hubert, not-too-bright Hubert, has a rather elaborate plan to kill his aunt. His aunt has a somewhat different adaptation of the plan in mind.

"A Crime for Llewellyn" and "How to Kill Aunty" are both clever, character-driven mysteries. The problem with having them both in the same volume is that they have somewhat similar endings - not the plots, but the moods of the two concluding paragraphs. They are individually each very good, though.

"The Man Who Figured Everything" was originally published in the January, 1960 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, but it is not principally a mystery story but rather a Western. This was one of the stories Sturgeon wrote in collaboration with Don Ward. Reportedly Ward suggested the plots and Sturgeon did the actual writing. These were all collected as Sturgeon's West (1973).

"The Man Who Figured Everything" is another story about people, rather than gimmicks. A superb planner runs an outlaw gang, which is infiltrated by an undercover lawman. Both these men are attractive characters, and they are also both attracted by the same woman. I have read very few Western stories, but I suspect that this is well above average for the genre.

The other eight stories are all science fiction or fantasy. I do not like "It Opens the Sky" as much as I do the rest of these. In a society regulated by "Angels," who appear to be male humans with extraordinary powers, crime is almost non-existent. First, because there is no need - society can easily provide for everyone's physical needs. Second, because there is almost no chance that criminals can avoid capture. So why would anyone be a criminal? For the challenge, of course. To help "open the sky."

"It Opens the Sky" first appeared in Venture Science Fiction, November, 1957. Also in 1957, Slippery Jim diGriz, a somewhat similar character in a vaguely similar situation, made his first appearance in the short story "The Stainless Steel Rat" by Harry Harrison (Analog Science Fiction, August, 1957.) The following is material about diGriz from Wikipedia:

James Bolivar diGriz goes by many aliases, including "Slippery Jim" and "The Stainless Steel Rat". He is a futuristic con man, thief, and all-round rascal. He is charming and quick-witted. He is also a master of disguise and martial arts, an accomplished bank robber, a criminal mastermind, an expert on breaking and entering, and (perhaps most usefully) a skilled liar. Master of self-rationalization, the Rat frequently justifies his crimes by arguing that he is providing society with entertainment; and besides which, he only steals from institutions that have insurance coverage. He displays a strong sense of morality, albeit in a much more restricted sense than is traditional. For example, diGriz will steal without compunction, but deplores killing.

The character was introduced in Harrison's short story "The Stainless Steel Rat", first published in 1957 in Astounding magazine. The story introduces the Rat, who has just carried out a successful larceny operation, and subsequently details a complex bank robbery the Rat pulls off with ease; however, he is outfoxed by the mysterious "Special Corps" — a crime-fighting organisation staffed with former criminals — and recruited by them in order to fight crime.

The resemblance is certainly not overwhelming, but I think that it is interesting that two authors as different as Sturgeon and Harrison each came up with even vaguely similar characters and situations at virtually the same time. (I would not be surprised if others have already noticed this.)

"A Touch of Strange" is Sturgeon's well-known mer-people story. It has one of the very few phrases in a Sturgeon story that irritate me every time I read it:

He wriggled a bare (i.e. mere) buttock-clutch on the short narrow shelf of rock...

The point of the parenthetical emendation is, I guess, to assure the reader that John Smith is not (shockingly) swimming without a bathing suit. And who would care? Sturgeon is seldom consciously cute, but he is in this passage. Why not just say, "a mere buttock-clutch" and let it go?

Now that I have finished bitching about an admittedly tiny flaw, let me add that "A Touch of Strange" is one of the kind of stories I have mentioned in earlier reviews of Sturgeon's work, stories that I once thought were incredible and now believe are only very fine. I still like it - a lot - but I no longer feel the urge to build it a shrine. (I still love the title, though.)

On the other hand, I have never understood the title "Like Young." There is a jazz song by André Previn with the same title but I don't know if there is a connection. This is the only comic story in this volume. Mankind is dying of a kind of plague (see, I said it was comic). The remaining humans have decided that they must leave a record of their most important accomplishments, to be used in millenia to come for the race that humans think will follow them, the otters. Of course, the otters might have a different opinion.

Groff Conklin was one of the most important anthologists of the 1950's. He asked Sturgeon for a story for an anthology to be titled The Graveyard Reader. Sturgeon wrote a story with the same name as the anthology. The narrator is a man whose wife had recently died. He had always felt that in life much of her was hidden from him. He meets a man who tells him that it is possible to read graves - not gravestones, but the graves themselves - and thus learn everything about the deceased occupant of the grave. The man he met teaches the widower how to read graves.

This is a lovely story with a quite moving ending.

Sturgeon was known for his writing about love. He also wrote memorably about the importance of being needed. The two stories of his on that topic that mean the most to me are "Bright Segment" (1955) and the story in this book titled simply "Need." There is a man in this story who feels other people's needs, not just as an awareness but as something affecting him personally, like hunger or fear. He must respond or suffer. But he is not the main character in the story.

That main character is Smith, a man who never feels needs, including his own. He is "well-off," married, comfortable. He does not have a job, because he does not, financially, need one to live. Then his wife leaves him at the same as he gets to know the man who is all too aware of needs.

I think that this is an excellent story and I am surprised that it is not better known. It, too, is quite moving. It also contains a complete little adventure story, literally (but not figuratively) a cliff-hanger, the rescue of a thirteen year old boy clinging precariously on the side of a cliff.

I am going to quote a small passage from the story, not because it is especially relevant or outstandingly well-written, but just because I enjoy it. "Gorwing" is the man who feels others' needs and "G-Note" is George Noat, an extraordinarily kind man who sometimes assists Gorwing:

There had been "fun ones." Like the afternoon that Gorwing had come roaring and snapping into his place, just as urgently as he had tonight, demanding to know if G-Note had a copy of Trials and Triumphs, My Forty Years in the Show Business, by P. T. Barnum; and G-Note had! And they had tumbled it, with a lot of other old books, into two boxes, and had driven out to the end of Carrio Lane, where Gorwing knew there was somebody who needed the book - not who, not why, just that there was somebody who needed it - and he and G-Note had stood at opposite sides of the lane, each with a box of books, and had bellowed at each other, "You got the P. T. Barnum book over there?" and "I don't know if I have the P. T. Barnum book here; have you got the P. T. Barnum book there?" and "What is the name of the P. T. Barnum book?" and "Trials and Triumphs, My Forty Years in the Show Business," and so on, until, sure enough, a window popped open and a lady called down, "Do one of you men really have Barnum's biography there?" and, when they said they had, she said it was a miracle; and she came down and gave them fifteen dollars for it.

I love this both for the joy in it and for the audacity of Sturgeon's beautiful long sentence.

(An aside: the term "G-Note" is - or was -
slang for a thousand dollar bill.)

In the story notes at the back of this book, Paul Williams quotes something he had written elsewhere: " 'The Comedian's Children,' about a manipulative TV personality, was another impossible triumph - that story tore me into little pieces when I was twelve years old, and it remains one of the most powerful pieces of fiction I've ever read."

I am not sure when I first read this story, but I believe that I was also around twelve. I don't think that I felt torn into pieces but I know that I loved it and, as Williams did, I retain my great respect for the it.

"The Comedian's Children" tells of a new illness, affecting children only, that has arisen in the year 2034, seemingly brought to Earth by a ship returning from Iapetus, a satellite of Saturn. The "comedian" in the title is a man named Heri Gonza, who has become the face of the fight against the illness, leading fund-raising, information-gathering, research, and the housing and care of the afflicted children. He has become one of the most revered figures in the world.

In opposition to Gonza, there is Dr. George Horowitz, working independently on a cure for the disease, who because of his refusal to work with Gonza, has become one of the most reviled figures in the world. Dr. Horowitz does not trust Gonza. He believes that Gonza is exploiting the children for self-aggrandizement; he suspects that if a cure is found by people working for the medical foundation established by Gonza, Gonza might conceal it.

Unfortunately, there Sturgeon's logic breaks down. There is no basis shown for Horowitz's distrust of Gonza. When I was twelve, this did not bother me; now it does. The reader must accept that Horowitz is sane and that his response to Gonza makes some sense; equally, the reader must not automatically assume that Gonza is evil.

There are wonderful details in the story. The introduction to the last of Gonza's broadcasts, for example, is close to perfect. The ending of that broadcast is perfect.

One thing that Sturgeon never mentions is the reason that the world is so willing to hate Horowitz. There is not a word in the story about religion, but I think that the likelihood is that Dr. Horowitz is intended to be Jewish.

At the time "Tandy's Story" was written, Sturgeon had four children. The names of the three oldest were the same as those of the three children in the family in this story. This is a bright, cheerful science fiction tale.

Tandy is five years old, the middle of the three children, possessed of an easily-triggered temper. But Tandy begins to change, becoming kinder and more caring. Of course, that isn't so remarkable, once a child has exposure to extraterrestrial intelligence.

The final story to discuss (and the third story in the book with a title beginning "The Man Who...") is "The Man Who Lost the Sea."

When I previously wrote a review of this single story, I decided "to cheat and steal my review from the foreward to Slow Sculpture - Volume XII: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon." This was written by another excellent author, Connie Willis, about "The Man Who Lost the Sea":

...Circling, veering off at the last minute, taking off on talkative tangents, circling back, are the only way we can get to the secrets inside the story - and inside us. Ths only way we can bear to face what frightens us, to look at the terrible truth.

And Sturgeon's merciless. He's not going to spare us anything. He's going to make us look at the things we want to avert our gaze from. And he's not even going to let us hang on to those things that gave us cause for hope along the way - that resourceful problem-solving kid, the trail of Friday-like footprints heading off along the beach, the comforting murmur of the sea in our ears. It's a brilliant, brutal, beautifully written story, at the same time heartbreaking and soaringly triumphant. The best thing he ever wrote.

I said before that nobody who hasn't read "The Man Who Lost the Sea" can really understand science fiction. I stand by that, but at the same time the story's not like any other science fiction story. It's unique.

Yes, this is brilliant and unique and Sturgeon's best story. It is also a story easy to read aloud well. I don't want to go into the details of the story. Read it, listen to it, perhaps more than once.

Jonathan Lethem's foreward to this volume is short, nicely-written, and somewhat snarky. Some of Sturgeon's stories "stumble" - well, yes, but most of the ones in this particular volume don't, I think. "His imagination collapses into the Gothic in the non-SF tales." "Alternatively, consider how The Man Who Lost the Sea...relies on its rocket"; certainly not an extraordinary thing to rely on, in a story about inter-planetary travel. (I assume that Lethem was referring to the particular story rather than to the entire book, despite putting the title in italics rather than inside quotation marks.) I simply don't understand Lethem's comment, "His cheerleading's embarrassing."

Paul Williams's notes are, as throughout this series, informative and irritating. After being annoyed by Jonathan Lethem's critical remarks in the foreward, I suppose it is unfair for me to wish that Williams expressed more opinions (especially in something that is supposed to be just notes on the stories). However, his enthusiasm about "The Comedian's Children" is a high point of the notes.

Also, although this volume does include a very welcome section of "Further bibliographic and biographical notes" by Williams, I wish this were much longer and more detailed. For example, it is mentioned in passing in the story note for "A Touch of Strange" that Sturgeon had become the book reviewer for Venture Science Fiction; I would like to have seen more about that.

[Michael Battaglia · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I had been reading as they came out, year after year, I probably would have been impressed with Sturgeon's consistency but not overly bowled over as I would have only really been absorbing the latest collection with the stories from the year before existing only as a hazy hodgepodge in my mind of spaceships and aliens and aching sincerity, with the occasional cowboy tossed in just to throw me off. Hey, I read a lot of books. But reading them all in a row like this, one book after the other after the other, it becomes almost paralyzing how downright scary good at this he was, where his average level of quality was already better than most people could achieve and his dizzy heights were far beyond what most short story writers were even able to conceive. A collection like this, gathering together everything from a roughly three year period, on some level would act as someone else's "Best Of" where for Sturgeon this is just what he did all the time.

During this period (probably the tail-end of his peak and most fertile writing years, as the next collection covers a much broader period of time in a lower page count) he was still genre hopping like a madman, dabbling in a couple of mystery stories and even another good ol' Western (not his first, but do people even seriously write Westerns anymore for the mass market . . . I always imagine the closest things are like romance novels, "Gonna Wrangle Myself a Cowpoke" type things) and not really sticking with the old standby of SF that has gotten him this far. Instead he seems more interested in people as people, approaching them from unusual angles or giving people strange and unexplainable powers that he uses as a springboard for a character study. The stories aren't so much plot oriented as situation focused, taking a premise and letting the characters play out over it in a near rambling fashion until it comes to a conclusion that seems inevitable and is either the result of a fatal flaw uncovered during all the chatter (the opener "A Crime for Llewellyn", which comes across as a black humored film noir where the worst thing for the main character is that everything goes right) or hopeful in a world that doesn't always encourage it ("It Opens the Sky" which rambles on for a bit, probably too much, before laser beaming on an ending that encapsulates the whole story and maybe Sturgeon's philosophy in about a paragraph, reminding you how overwhelmingly overflowing he can be just by being economical).

Meanwhile, he goes and gives us a SF medical drama, of all things, that isn't quite "Sector General" but one-ups that series by letting the ending dissolve into a television scripts that seems to take aim at the sincerity of the people who do the lengthy telethons for charity. "The Graveyard Reader" winds up being one of the more touching stories in the collection, as a man learns to read graves from another, a story that touches the borders of fantasy in a low key that in some fashion seems to prefigure a good chunk of Neil Gaiman's career. For giggles he throws in a tale that acts like a Turing Test to make sure if the story was written by a child or not ("The Man Who Told Lies"). Another Western arrives around this time, with "The Man Who Figured Everything" taking the idea of a gang and making the gang successful while the oddball protagonist enjoys a fine spot of reading now and then. You get a strange tale of revenge on a bus ride ("Night Ride") and in "Need" an extremely good example of how he used vague dollops of magical realism to further showcase his ability to dissect people and their psychologies. If not for the title story it might go down as the best one in this collection, moving smoothly from what seems to be a clunky start where two guys overcharge a desperate guy for a taxi ride before taking us into a network of people operating in the city who are coordinated based on where they're needed, directed by a asocial fellow who can sense what someone needs and how to go about getting it to them.

But its the title story that again takes the cake, as it were, with "The Man Who Lost the Sea" hitting those ecstatic heights that only Sturgeon was capable of, a SF tale with very little SF, one that glories in its lyricism even as it tricks you into thinking its less experimental that it really is (written almost entirely in the second person, it slithers around the illusion of different viewpoints with a frighteningly practiced ease), one that pricks you down someplace personal, that weaves bizarre imagery and impressions before pulling it all together in an explanation that seems like the story is telling you too much, and then it seems like it isn't telling you enough and then you realize it is exactly enough, that makes you understand the desperation of striving and the ultimate triumph that failure can bring. He does this in ten pages. It was highly praised when it was released but I feel like it isn't too widely remembered today, even though its something that can still resonate fifty years down the line. But it probably belongs on a shortlist of greatest American short stories, as its the rare story that can capture the mood of a time and a certain feeling and yet still feel highly personal (more personal even than "Tandy's Story" which he and his family are actually in). But that was his greatest gift, to put some feeling behind all the dark voids, gleaming spaceships and alien planets. His people live in strange corners and are more than willing to explain themselves if anyone would bother to listen. But we overlook them, perhaps unintentionally, perhaps with a poorly defined revulsion and in doing so threaten to overlook ourselves. At his best his was a wounded vision, bleeding but still unwilling to place the bandages on and let it heal, until everyone saw and perhaps understood finally what we were doing to ourselves. And let us know, even if it killed him, that it wasn't and would never be too late.

[Lemar · Rating 4 out of 5]

A family man with a raging, colossal imagination, Sturgeon is another author I found through the efforts of Jonathan Lethem who actively promotes great authors I’ve never heard of but now love (hello Don Carpenter). These short stories have a remarkable range of subjects and tenor. My favorite was “Tandy’s Story” but I enjoyed them all.
This story highlights his ability and desire to understand the world as seen through the eyes of children. What messes it up for so many others who try to do this is a condescending attitude that they try, but fail, to check. Reading Sturgeon one feels (as one feels reading Philip K Dick) that he simply likes his characters and suffers from no embarrassment or qualms about telling their story.
That aspect of his writing is by no means a central defining tenet, but it is something that I find rare in science fiction writers who tend to be a self-absorbed and heady bunch: quite interesting, but opting out of exploring in their work the time consuming, emotionally draining but rich experience of being someone’s parent.
Another interesting attribute of his writing, especially for someone whose work is featured in 1950’s magazines with fantastic, colorful cover art of rockets and space babes, is that the speculative part is often very subtle. So no aliens with laser shooting eyes but instead gripping, we’ll written human drama with a dash of the supernatural.

[Jim Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read the first 9 volumes and this one didn't seem as "science fiction-y" as the previous 9 volumes. This isn't a complaint since the stories are mostly wonderful studies of human character in various and often strange situations. The overall feel was of fantasy although a couple of stories involved crime and a couple had more of a mainstream feel. The weakest story for me was the single western story because I didn't find the ending very satisfying. Probably the only 3 star story among the 4's and 5's for the the others. My favorite story was "Need" a wonderful fantasy. Gorwing was a conflicted character who felt people's need and a compulsion to fulfill it and if possible, but not usually, get some sort of monetary reward. The three main characters complement each other well and provide the the interplay to show Smith's change of attitude and the provide a deeper, growing understanding of Gorwing. My next favorite was "The Graveyard Reader" a very subtle fantasy with a wonderful ending.

[Joseph]

A great story by a great writer. A wonderful read-aloud piece.

[Elizabeth Engstrom · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-have for the science fiction reader's bookshelf

[Lomki Avulours · Rating 4 out of 5]

More and more I appreciate short stories. In a short story, you only tell what needs to be told. No need to bother with fillers or side dishes.
Sturgeon is a master of the trade, he is.
Strange thing is, with not so many words, he can draw such a cast of characters.
Each story is a world in itself. You have read maybe 50 pages, but you are loaded like you have read a whole Proust volume (not that I ever have).
And what a range of themes: from crashing on Mars to good old western (it will be 1 star for the sheriff, 3 for the deputies) to pure madness.
And to think there are 12 other volumes! Life can be sweet sometimes.

[Jamie Maclaren · Rating 5 out of 5]

I give this book five stars purely for my absolute love for the title story. The Man Who Lost the Sea, for me, ranks alongside the works of Borges as one of the most perfectly worked short stories in literature. As a bonus you get plenty of other great stuff, but the title story is worth the price of admission.

[Justin Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant, each one so vastly different. Maybe I am just overwhelmed by the twists of a short-story writer, but these were truly thought provoking.

[Brannen Vick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some great short stories from sci-fi Sturgeon; looking forward to reading more by him. Sturgeon inspired Vonnegut's Kilgore Trout character.

[Stefan · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the more inconsistent short story collections I've read. Enjoyed 'It Opens the Sky' and 'The Man Who Figured Everything' a fair bit, but struggled to care about a lot of the other ones ('The Man Who Lost the Sea', 'Tandy's Story', etc).