The Perfect Host : Volume V

By Theodore Sturgeon

A collection of stories, mostly science fiction, some fantasy and one cowboy story.

• Quietly A girl is raised by her anarchist father and abandoned by him when she turns 18.
• The Music Lunatic in a hospital eats a nurse.
• Unite and Conquer Scientist fakes an alien invasion to unite mankind.
• The Love of Heaven An evolved human race wants to return to the home world but discover they are poison to all life on Earth.
• Till Death Do Us Join A man who thinks he has an evil twin comes up with a plan to kill the twin.
• The Perfect Host  A string of mysterious deaths are caused by a "thing" that attaches itself to people it finds interesting and sympathetic. 
• The Martian and the Moron An empty-headed girl makes contact with Mars. Humorous story.
• Die, Maestro, Die!  Band announcer is deadly jealous of the band leader.
• The Dark Goddess  Woman wants her brother's common-law wife to make the marriage legal. Story has a good, brief description of life in the 1920s.
• Scars Cowboy rescues a woman.
• Messenger A rich inventor is planning to give all his wealth away. But his daughter's fiance tries to kill the rich man before he can do that.
• Minority Report A spaceship goes on on a mission and never returns. So another ship goes after it to figure out what happened.
• Prodigy After multiple wars and pollution, humans have developed many mutations. In order to stop these mutations from being passed on, children are put to death if they don't fit the standard norm.
• Farewell to Eden Two people escape Earth for a new world but it doesn't end well.
• One Foot and the Grave A man and a woman both have one of their feet change into a hoof. They are told it was caused by magic emanating from an ancient being chained in the nearby hills.
• What Dead Men Tell A guy stumbles upon a secret society of immortals and has to pass a deadly test to become one of them.
• The Hurkle Is a Happy Beast Story of an invasive species, only this species is an extraterrestrial. Humorous story.

This is a pretty good collection of stories. The author is very fond of the twist ending. For example, in Scars, the main character claims to be a gentleman because he rescued a woman and declined to take advantage of her, even though she indicated she was interested. [Spoiler]Turns out he is impotent.