Glad you got to the end and glad you enjoyed it.

It gets better on second read, too.

Eriksen is currently working on a series built around Karsa. Believe the plan is it will be a trilogy. Should be pretty interesting...


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One can only hope.
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What's the meaning of Icarium saying "I remember" there at the end? Did seeing the blue pot shards wake him up to who he is and is he going to wreck things?
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That’s a great question. I’m not sure.

Is it just Icarium doing his usual “I’m close, I feel it this time”? Or real?

Suspect we might find out in the next series. A budding God of War is going to draw attention from other ascendants...
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I am looking for a couple of old Robert Sheckley short stories. One is "Spacmen in the Dark" originally published in 1950s adventure magazine called "Climax." The other is called " Man of the Hour. "


Both were collected in a book called "Science Fiction Digest, Vol 1 No 2, 1954" but the only copies available of it that I can find range in price from 50 to 125 dollars.

Any ideas where I can find these stories online for free or at least at a reasonable price?
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Looked up his bibliography. Holy shit. What's the next level above prolific?

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?818+None


(sorry didn't find prints of your stories)
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Yeah, the dude was a short story machine in the 50s. I've managed to read over 200 of them over the last couple of weeks.

After my disappointing experience with the Hugo nominated stories, I was pleasantly surprised by Sheckley's stuff. My previous encounter with his work was execrable DS9 novel The Laertian Gamble, but after hearing a few of his shows adapted for Mindwebs I decided to do a little digging.


He does not excel in a longer format, though a couple of his novels are interesting enough to check out. Immortality Inc. is pretty fun, and Dimension of Miracles is sort of a proto- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Sheckley does know how to write a short story though. You know how Rod Serling seemed to have an inimitable knack for producing memorable episodes in an anthology format? Well, Sheckley had a similar skill. He just gets how to write a short story.

Now, I'm not saying his stories are brilliant life changing tales or anything, but they are entertaining and imaginative. They have an ineffable quality like some of the short stories I read as a kid that have always stuck with me like The Most Dangerous Game or Leinigen vs the Ants.


If anyone is interested in entertaining 50s sci-fi written with tongue planted firmly in cheek, try some Robert Sheckley. I also think that his stories would make an excellent introduction to sci-fi for younger readers.
"The Store of the Worlds" is the best compilation of his stuff that I've found.



P.S. I'm working on a compilation of his short stories. It will consist of about 30 of my favorite stories. I'm not very tech savvy so it's going to take a while, but when it's done I'd be happy to share.

P.P.S. If anyone can find a copy of the two stories I mentioned in the previous post, I'd greatly appreciate it. I'd like to check out Spacemen in the Dark before I finish my compilation, but I don't suppose it really matters.
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Here's my Sheckley compilation:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/c6slhl...Final.rar/file



Epub and Mobi formats. I'm not tech savvy and this was my first go with this type of project but hopefully the files play ok.
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The Complete short stories of Theodore Sturgeon Vol. 1: The Ultimate Egoist


These volumes feature his stories in roughly chronological order, so this is his very earliest work. A good chunk of the stories are just crummy filler items for newspapers. Nothing great, but a few interesting items:

"Bianca's Hands" is a horror story that has an almost southern gothic feel to it. "Fluffy" and "Cellmate" are ok in a pulpy Weird Tales sort of way. "The Ultimate Egoist" has an interesting premise (for its time) but would have been better if it had been played for laughs or as a straight horror story.


The Complete short stories of Theodore Sturgeon Vol. 8: Bright Segment.

I think a lot of Sturgeon's later stories are a tad too long. The title story of this collection for example. This book contains a few of his more famous stories like the unfortunately titled Twink, as well as To Here and Easel, When You're Smiling, and Bulkhead. Not that crazy about any of them.

Oddly enough, I think the Riddle of Ragnarok is probably my favorite of the bunch. The first half is a retelling of the Death of Baldur, and the second half is about the Ravens of Odin solving the murder mystery. I liked it, but my childhood love of Thor comics may be clouding my judgment.


The Fredric Brown Megapack.

"The Answer" is my favorite of this collection of 33 stories. It's similar to a more famous Isaac Asimov story, but actually preceded it.

Other stories of note: Two "joke" stories "Earthmen Bearing Gifts" and "Puppet Show" are fun. "House of Mirrors" has a cool premise. "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" is a neat little "weird" tale.


I'm also still reading Hugo nominated short stories. Most still aren't that great but I did read a good one called "Tideline" by Elizabeth Bear. Ray Bradbury's "The Dragon" is another Hugo nominated story that I read recently; not bad. And speaking of dragons, I also read a Harlan Ellison story called "Delusions For a Dragon Slayer." I wasn't too crazy about it at first, but it keeps popping back into my mind so I may have to reevaluate my opinion of it.


Random shorts:


"Adam and No Eve" is another interesting short story by Alfred Bester.


"High Weir" by Samuel R. Delany didn't really grab me.


I also listened to a cool episode of Mindwebs called Rust based on a story from 1939. The saddest story about killer robots you will ever hear. Here's a link:

https://archive.org/details/MindWebs_201410


Not exactly sci-fi or fantasy, but I listened to a cool podcast episode called "20 Simple Steps To Ventriloquism" a few days ago and I thought it was pretty neat. The podcast was called "Pseudopod" and they specialize in horror short fiction. Here's a link:

http://pseudopod.org/2015/04/09/pseu...ventriloquism/
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I gotta put these Hugo short stories down for a while. The selections have pretty much always sucked but the ones from the last few years are just too much for me to handle. The one that broke me:

https://www.apex-magazine.com/if-you...osaur-my-love/


Dear god.


I'm going to read some Lovecraft or Robert E. Howard stuff to cleanse the palette, I think.
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I took a break from The Expanse series to read The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One 1929-1964 after picking it up for Kindle for a couple of bucks. I'm on the second to last story ("Flowers For Algernon", which I last read in the 5th grade) and the stories have been pretty good. The only one I didn't care for and didn't finish, was "The Roads Must Roll" by Heinlein. There have been a few WTF? stories too, especially "The Country of the Kind," by Damon Knight but overall worth the read. I was worried that they would be really dated but that hasn't really been an issue.
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I think "Flowers for Algernon" worked better as a short story than as a full-length novel. I don't care for that Heinlein story either. "Country of the Kind" is a bit of an oddity. I'm not crazy about it when I read it, but I enjoy the episode of Mindwebs where the host reads it.




I've recently read a couple of other Damon Knight stories that were interesting as part of my Hugo readthru: "I See You" and " To Serve Man. " The latter was turned into the classic TZ episode of the same name.





I'm currently reading some H.P. Lovecraft inspired stories.

Sticks by Karl Edward Wagner.
A Colder War by Charles Stross
A Study in Emerald by Neil Gaiman
Notebook Found in a Deserted House by Robert Bloch
The Events at Poroth Farm by T.E.D Klein
The Men from Porlock by Laird Barron
Black Man with a Horn by T.E.D. Klein
The Black Stone by Robert E. Howard


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I didn't even realize that "Flowers For Algernon" had different short story and novel versions. In my defense, though, I read the novel 40+ years ago. i was thinking that the story was progressing pretty quickly.

I think my favorites of this collection are "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" by Lewis Padgett and "Arena" by Frederic Brown followed by "First Contact" by Murray Leinster and "The Little Black Bag" by C. M. Kornbluth, though the ending of the latter was a bit abrupt.
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As I mentioned above, I recently read a collection of Fredric Brown's works. This is my favorite of his so far:

http://www.roma1.infn.it/~anzel/answer.html


It's only a page long.

And, coincidentally, I listened to a podcast of a Lewis Padget (aka Henry Kutner) weird tale called "The Graveyard Rats." It's been anthologized many times. He wrote a lot of Lovecraft inspired stuff.
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What a great collection of fantasy books here! My husband likes this genre very much, so I'll share this discussion with him. Thanks a lot!
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