The criteria for my Junk or Jewel challenge is simple. Does a book have fewer than one thousand ratings on GoodReads? If yes, it’s a suitable candidate. Today’s book involved a little bit of rules-bending. You see, The Dreaming Jewels has over three thousand ratings. The Cosmic Rape has just under one thousand, and Venus Plus X has over two thousand. However, I wanted a nice thick book to take on holiday with me. Happily, the omnibus of these three novels has a mere seventy reviews.

Each of the three novels is fairly short, with only The Dreaming Jewels exceeding two hundred pages, so this isn’t very long as omnibuses go. The three novels all have their own page counts, and the differing fonts make me think this was rather hastily assembled. The first two have fairly large fonts, while Venus Plus X is even smaller than some of the battered old mass market paperbacks I’ve read. Other than their author, the three stories have nothing in common, so you can easily read this cover to cover without feeling bogged down.

The one final thing I’ll say about this omnibus as a whole is that I really wish it had been given a unique title. Even something as simple as Three by Sturgeon or The Collected Sturgeon would make it a whole lot easier to talk about. Instead, the cover simply lists the novels collected herein. For that reason, among others, I’m going to quickly review each book individually.

The Dreaming Jewels is a light and fun novel dealing with a little boy who joins the circus, and weird crystals from outer space. The idea of an alien artefact that can perfectly replicate anything it chooses makes for an interesting read but, unusually for the time it was written, the story is far more concerned with character work. It builds up a wonderful vision of a circus freakshow, and at times I forgot I was reading science fiction. It’s a very gentle introduction to Sturgeon, and one that raised my hopes for the rest of the omnibus.

The Cosmic Rape is far better than I expected it to be given the title. Yes, it opens with a drunk man eating a burger that – what are the odds? – contains an alien spore, but things get more interesting from there. It’s not always clear what’s happening as more and more characters are introduced to such a short novel, but Sturgeon has a very good grip on an alien perspective. Hive minds are an old trope, and this is a very good early example of the concept. It’s a story of a culture clash as much as it is of an alien invasion, and even if the execution leaves a lot to be desired, the ideas are worth the read.

Then there’s Venus Plus X. Nominated for a Hugo Award, and possibly Sturgeon’s most famous work. For my money (and I spent a cool £10 on this omnibus in Oxfam), it’s by far his worst. I slightly expected this. Any book written in 1960 and focused so heavily on sex and gender is always going to be slightly suspect. There are some rather dubious assumptions in here, but nothing overtly offensive, at least not to my eyes. My issue with the book is twofold. Firstly, it’s incredibly dull in the way that utopian fiction always is. Secondly, it’s a structural mess. Half of the story is lectures in paradise, and the other half is random scenes of daily all-American life. It doubtless felt more transgressive and ground-breaking at the time, but for me reading it sixty-five years late, it was an absolute slog.

Theodore Sturgeon is on of these Golden Age names that is not as popular as he once was. The name might ring a bell with readers, but I don’t see his work being discussed much. If these three stories prove anything, it’s that he had range. A range of themes, a range of stories, and a range of results. I’m not in a great rush to buy the rest of his work, but I’d definitely pick it up if I happened to see it for a reasonable price. If you can find a decent copy of The Dreaming Jewels or The Cosmic Rape, I suggest you do the same. But if the only Sturgeon available is Venus Plus X, maybe leave it in the junk pile.