Advertisement

Though originally released as a crime novel, Theodore Sturgeon's Some of Your Blood reads as a semi-realistic, semi-playful horror tale as though Sturgeon asked the what-if question about vampires: if vampires truly did exist, what would they be like? This short novel gathers evidence from the protagonist and several psychologists in a most unusual volume that will have many readers clinging it to their bosoms as one of their treasured oddities.

This narrative gathers together documents on the nature of a young man locked away in a psych ward -- initially assumed innocent, but the psychologists see something sinister lurking beneath the tale he shares with his various military psychologists.

George Smith tells his story in a softly Kentuckian voice. Born of two parents from the old country, he loathes hearing them bicker. The father is a drunk who often loses his jobs and stays away from home for long periods. One day when the father is particularly violent to his mother, George throws a knife across the room. This and another event, that the psychologists piece together, keep George's father from ever hurting her again. Yet she dies -- this woman with whom George is strangely enmeshed.

The father teaches the teenage George to steal but George gets locked away for his troubles. It turns out he preferred the jail to home, anyway. George eventually moves in with his aunt, but he's become so taciturn, they cannot get a conversation from him. George falls for a girl named Anna, with whom he cultivates a strange relationship that brings him to the military psych ward.

This short novel truly is more than the sum of its parts. If you seek nontraditional narratives, look no further. This is a must read.

Many of Theodore Sturgeon's classic collections and novels have been recently released in ebook formats. I examined a number on my APB blog.

Trent Walters teaches science; lives in Honduras; edited poetry at Abyss & Apex; blogs science, SF, education, and literature, etc. at APB; co-instigated Mundane SF (with Geoff Ryman and Julian Todd) culminating in an issue for Interzone; studied SF writing with dozens of major writers and and editors in the field; and has published works in Daily Cabal, Electric Velocipede, Fantasy, Hadley Rille anthologies, LCRW, among others.