I now have all 7 volumes - all 7 available currently. But I only got volume 5 about a month ago, much later than 6 and 7. And the biggest problem I am facing now - how am I going to make it last till they print the 8th?! I read one story per week - though I die to gulp them down and make a feast of reading this book. Each precious tender love story - only one a week. Once in a week I sit down and switch the world off and read about love - because that is what Sturgeon have been writing about all his life. He takes you by hand and shows you that somebody's Eden is always somebody's else Hell; and makes you walk beside a quiet girl - quietly.. Or sit and listen to a slow dialogue of two cowboys near the fire - and at the last words to burst out laughing only to smile sadly and tenderly a minute later... Theodore Sturgeon makes you love life - and that is the best compliment I could pay any writer.

As a writer, Sturgeon provokes one of two reactions in me: either to just give up since I know I'll never be able to equal that much quality for as long as I live, or to sit back down and write even more in an redoubled effort to equal that quality. I tend to like the second myself and I think Ted would agree, reading one of his stories you get a sense of wonder and enchantment, much as he probably felt writing it and to me it's like a gaunlet being thrown down saying, "This is the best I can do, I know you can do just as good. Prove it." Ah but the quality here is not to be believed. Even if you discount the "undiscovered" story "Quietly" which is apparently a precursor somehow to More Than Human (it's a tenuous link, even the series editor admits it) there's stuff like the title story, one of the groundbreaking stories not only for science fiction telling but the short story genre in general, there's also a neat creepy jazz story and a Western story and so much that when you finish you sit back and think about all the good stuff you just read . . . and then realize that the five volumes that are to come are supposed to represent his very best work. Argh, Ted, you don't make the challenge easy but I think it's one I accept. You want no less. Read them all already, what are you waiting for?

The publication of the collected short works of Theodore Sturgeon is cause for rejoicing. Sturgeon is the Beethoven of Science Fiction, and this fact has not yet been recognized. The thing that makes Beethoven tower over all other classical composers is his compelling ability to communicate powerful emotion. His greatest works are more than technical masterpieces; they make the listener glad to be human. They uplift, magnificantly.

This is also exactly true of Theododre Sturgeon. Sturgeon's greatest works speak directly to the heart, as do the works of Beethoven. And they do so as powerfully, since they almost always speak of love. Human love, not any pale imitation.

For several decades, most people new to Sturgeon had to approach him through his novels, since publishers did not like to print short story collections. This is a shame, since approaching Sturgeon through his novels is very much like approaching Beethoven through his string quartets. Masterpieces they may be, but they're not terribly approachable. If you want to appreciate Beethoven, start with his symphonies. If you want to appreciate Sturgeon, start with his short stories.

And just as Beethoven's best work was done later in his life, so also were Sturgeon's best stories. In the time frame that "The Perfect Host" covers, Sturgeon was just beginning to hit his stride. His greatest work will show up in the volumes to come.

Thank you, Paul Williams, more than I can say, for bringing this collection into print.

It was simply brilliant. It brings out the aethethics that you would find in an independant film while swallowing your emotions whole. I, personnally, found it very sensual and exotic in a wretched-suberbia way.

It's a shame that this book had to be so big, and its excerpts so brief. McCaffery has chosen a good selection of postmodern SF, but the excerpts are too often just a couple pages long. The result is a book a mile wide and an inch deep: it touches on every aspect of postmodern SF without really explaining or clearing up anything at all.

A good way to use this book might be to read through it, choose what strikes your fancy, then buy the complete books attached to those. But I'm afraid if you just read this book, your glimpses of this very exciting genre will be too fleeting for you to get a good picture of it as a whole.

To his credit, McCaffery has chosen an excellent array of writers and subgenres, including many who I did not know were SF or who dealt with SF in ways I hadn't expected. I should also mention that the design of the book is fantastic.

This book is a must-have if you're a fan of anything cyberpunk. There are more than 40 contributors, so not every piece is brilliant, but the book still deserves a five star rating. Highlights: fiction from almost everyone who was important in the cyberpunk movement (Gibson, Rucker, Shiner, Shirley, Sterling, etc.) and some other excellent writers not usually included in the group (Ballard, W. S. Burroughs, Pynchon), along with insightful essays by a diverse selection of writers including Timothy Leary and several important figures in the world of postmodern theory (Baudrillard, Derrida, Jameson, Kroker). Storming the Reality Studio is one book that I am proud to own, and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I do.

I enjoyed this collection of cyberpunk writing immensely. McCaffery chose a fine collection of cyberpunk examples, ranging from the well known to the less known, from fiction to non-fiction ssay. The ordering is near perfection--the arrangement allows the pieces to speak to each other, and of each other (a very cyberpunkean move). Given the above reviewer's apparent distress concerning certain aspects of the book, and some misguided reductions of cyberpunk (basically just SF without hairy aliens; and his basic misunderstanding of the interpolation that occurs within the genre--i.e. his rantings re: Acker and hackdom), I hope this doesn't dissuade you from purchasing this very worthwhile book--it's wonderful. Especially exciting is the "Cyberpunk 101" section where various books and films are listed and shortly (and bitingly witty--see the one for Ballard's _Crash_) are recommended and briefly summarized.

I don't know how I acquired my copy of this book but I found it while cleaning house last week and decided to read it. I am glad I did. The post-modern imagery is so over-the-top that it was impossible to focus on my troubles. A must-read for anyone who has ever seriously considered, for instance, walking accross a desert with no canteen just to see if you can.

A tough book to find, but when you do, it's worth it. The essays in this collection are informative, shedding light onto such slippery aspects of the novel as style, recurring motifs, Pynchon's humor, the novel's narrative structure, and satirical targets. The final work in the collection is a memoir by someone who allegedly got high with the notoriously reclusive author in the late-Sixties. Much of the criticism in this collection assumes the reader is familiar with "Gravity's Rainbow" as a point of reference, so if "Vineland" is your first go at Pynchon, many of the references in these criticisms will seem difficult understand. Overall, this is a handy book to read once you've finished "Vineland" and need to make sense of all the wackiness. Happy searching!

Most of these interviews are dryly academic, as McCaffrey tries to relate this diverse group of SF authors into (or out of) the recently acceptable literary schools (mainly post modernism). There is some action--Sterling for most of his interview, Disch on certain other authors--and McCaffrey doesn't always stay with the academic format, but most of the pages are such snoozers. In every interview there is the inevitable "who are you reading" and "who are your influences" questions, which are interview cliches, but still prove to illuminate something about each author, if only "how" they answer these interminable questions. I enjoyed the Sterling, Wolfe, Delany, and Butler interviews the most. Benford was an incredible bore, and Burroughs walks all over the feigning McCaffrey.

This book contains interviews by Larry McCaffrey. Some interviews are in collaboration with Sinday Gregory, Brooks Landon or Jim McMenamin.

The interviews are, in general, remarkably detailed, providing any fan of any of the author's with fascinating insight into the work and minds of said author. That brings me to my first caveat: since all of the interviews partially revolve around the works of the authors up until 1991 when the book was published, the reader needs to be familiar with the major works of each author to understand the whole interview. (This is as it should be, of course, I am simply making the implicit an explicit.)

I doubt many readers are familiar with every author presented here since they are culled from a wide range of the speculative fiction spectrum. While it may not make the book appear worthwhile for the reader who is only familiar with one or two writers, it is worthwhile precisely because of that. I imagine that most readers will read an interview by a writer previously unknown to him or her and find the interest to explore those works. Likewise, no doubt some readers will read an interview and decide that the writer isn't worth the paper he or she is printed on.

(In case you're wondering, here is the complete list of interviewees: Gregory Benford, William Burroughs, Octavia Butler, Samuel Delany, Thomas Disch, William Gibson, Ursula Le Guin, Joanna Russ, Bruce Sterling, Gene Wolfe.)

The greater problem is the date of the book. Certainly many of the writers have expanded their craft since 1991, but the bigger issue is that the date marks (more or less) the end of the cyberpunk explosion. Since most of the interviews were conducted in the late '80s, around the peak of cyberpunk, some of the interviews focus on this phenomenon when not involved in the author's particular works. To understand the arguments and critcisms presented, it is necesary for the reader to have a significant grasp of the stagnation of early '80s SF; the significance and genesis of the cyberpunk explosion; what cyberpunk is and is not (specifically: the reader must know that cyberpunk is not the media image of computer cowboys with wetware, mirrorshades, leather, a bad attitude and a teen-angst stance); and the reader needs to understand the humanist vs. cyberpunk debate. (The distinction has largely been obliterated in the last decade.) If the reader does not have this basic framework, much of the criticisms leveled are esoteric -- or worse, they are totally incomprehensible.

Of particular interest are: Samuel Delany's interview, in which his normally difficult and dense thoughts are deconstructed in easier to understand language. Gene Wolfe's interview, in which he explains some of the textual games played in THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS and THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN. Gregory Benford's interview, int which he levels significant attacks against the cyberpunk movement; attacks which are heard too infrequntly these days, when 'everyone' knows that glitzy computer stuff is what SF is all about.

In short, if you want to understand some of the best and most eccentric minds working in SF in 1991, read this book.

An interesting idea to take a list of contemporary writers, track them down and pester them with questions asked in the moment and then locked their answers into print... fraught with dangers is the interviewing of authors, whether such interviews shed any light on the authors work is debatable but for the most part these conversations are at least snappy. As is to be expected the quality of each interview is dependant on the response of the reader, I found a few pearls(even amongst writers I have little taste for) but also found some a waste of page space. for interest authors iinterviewed: walter abish max apple ann beattie raymond carver samuel delaney barry hannah russell hoban william kennedy ursula le guin thomas mcguane tom robbins ron silliman edmund white