Speaking of story suggestions from must get books let me recommend one long out of print but well worth tracking down. It is entitled 25 Modern Short Stories, ed. by Phil Strong, dated aroung 1945 or 49. In it you will find such delights as The Grey Lady, The Pipes of Pan, God in the Garden, Alas All Thinking, The Vengeance of Adam Link, The Graveyard Rats (Lovecraft), and the venerable The Adaptive Ultimate. These stories and several more have some very engaging premises: how does a god make a living when no one believes in them anymore, what would happen if when you said roses are blue, then roses are blue, is the evolutionary race to hyper-intellegence all it's cracked up to be, how do you destroy a predatory mimic you helped create whom you both pity and love.