The Perfect Host

The Perfect Host is the fifth volume of The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, a highly acclaimed series that brings together all the short stories of one of hte finest science ficiton and fantasy writers of the century. Included in this volume are such major works as Die Maestro Die!, One Foot in the Grave, the title story, and a major discovery, Quietly. The latter is a previously unpublished story that would serve as the inspriation for Sturgeon's acknowledged masterpiece, the International Fantasy Award-winning novel More Than Human.
Sturgeon, the model for Kurt Vonnegut's archetypal, underappreciated American writer Kilgore Trout, is cited as a primary influence and favorite author by many of our most popular contemporary storytellers, including Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen R. Donaldson, Madeleine L'Engle, and Marion Zimmer Bradley, as well as late masters Robert Henlein, Gene Roddenberry, Carl Sagan, and Isaac Asimov. Now readers will have access to all of Sturgeon's short fiction. This fifth volume features stories written at the end of the 1940s when Sturgeon, while producing important works of science fiction, was exploring other genres including western stories, thrillers, and romance fiction.
The Perfect Host includes an analysis of Sturgeon's special place in literary history by Larry McCaffery, an authority on postmodern literature and contemporary American authors. Series editor Paul Williams annotates the stories thoroughly and offers extensive new informaiton on the circumstances of their publication and the author's life while he was writing them. two of these stories are published here for the first time.