As for the bit concerning horror tales... my point there is that he is, at least in some circles, remembered for some of those as well as his sf, and at times with reason.
I agree with that but I think Connavar's closer to "the truth". I mean, John D. MacDonald wrote SF (some of which is anthologized) but he's a spy writer. Leinster wrote everything under the sun but is an SF writer if we're picking one adjective. Etc. It's only my impression but, in 1938, he might have been a horror writer and people started reprinting all the Elak/Raynor/etc. stuff in the 90s (or so) leading to a resurgence in the horror aspect but that, for his active career of the 40s and 50s he was an SF writer and his rep from the 60s-80s was pretty exclusively that and I don't see any compelling argument to revise that. But, yeah, it's definitely not to dismiss the fact that he did do horror (or mystery) or that it wasn't vitally important in getting him started.
But this is the same discussion as was on the other thread.
That's a little vague, J-Sun
Unfortunately, my memory sucks, it's been awhile, and my notes also suck. All I can find is that I liked 15 of 17 stories in
The Best of Henry Kuttner (not a bad batting average) but I only mention one of the two exceptions as "What You Need". Then I particularly liked "Piggy Bank" (from the Boucher treasury, I think - I've liked most everything I've seen in major anthologies, IIRC) and, about
Robots Have No Tales (which you don't care about) I said, "You can definitely see how Harry Gerber of Rucker's
Master of Time and Space is descended from Gallegher and the part in the opening of
MTS that blew me away is right out of the close of "Time Locker" at the end of
Robots. I'd have to say Gallegher Plus is probably the best but "The World Is Ours" is right by it and "Time Locker" is right by
it. Next would probably be "The Proud Robot" and "Ex Machina" wasn't really bad and, encountered alone, might be fine but struck me as the least of these. They are generally excellent light SF with good batty ideas and the occasional serious observation. I'm not generally big on comic SF but this has some good stuff in it."
I jotted that down 13 years ago and it's still true that, other than The Stainless Steel Rat and some Kuttner and Rucker and maybe a few others, I'm not big on light, comic SF either so maybe this stuff would work for you as well as for me?