Theodore Sturgeon

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Theodore Sturgeon
fantasy
  • horror
  • mystery
  • western
  • literary criticism
    • SubjectScience fiction (as critic)
    Notable works
    Notable awards
    Sturgeon's "The Perfect Host" was the cover story in the November 1948 Weird Tales
    An early version of Sturgeon's first novel, The Dreaming Jewels, was the cover story in the February 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures
    Sturgeon's novella The Incubi of Parallel X was the cover story in the September 1951 Planet Stories
    Sturgeon's novella Granny Won't Knit took the cover of the May 1954 Galaxy Science Fiction, illustrated by Ed Emshwiller

    Theodore Sturgeon (

    fantasy, science fiction, and horror, as well as a critic. He wrote approximately 400 reviews and more than 120 short stories, 11 novels, and several scripts for Star Trek: The Original Series.[1]

    Sturgeon's science fiction novel

    Robert Heinlein
    .

    An overview of his work by science fiction critic Sam Moskowitz can be found in the collective biography Seekers of Tomorrow.[2]

    The

    Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Sturgeon in 2000, its fifth class of two dead and two living writers.[3]

    Biography

    Sturgeon was born Edward Hamilton Waldo in

    Staten Island, New York, in 1918. His name was legally changed to Theodore Sturgeon at age eleven after his mother's divorce and subsequent marriage to William Dicky ("Argyll") Sturgeon.[4]

    He sold his first story, "Heavy Insurance," in 1938 to the

    Argosy Magazine. He used the pen name
    "E. Waldo Hunter" when two of his stories ran in the same issue of Astounding. A few of his early stories were signed "Theodore H. Sturgeon".

    Sturgeon

    mystery novel, The Player on the Other Side (Random House, 1963). This novel was praised by critic H. R. F. Keating: "[I] had almost finished writing Crime and Mystery: The 100 Best Books, in which I had included The Player on the Other Side ... placing the book squarely in the Queen canon"[5] when he learned that it had been written by Sturgeon. Similarly, William DeAndrea, author and winner of Mystery Writers of America awards, selecting his ten favorite mystery novels for the magazine Armchair Detective, picked The Player on the Other Side as one of them. He said: "This book changed my life ... and made a raving mystery fan (and therefore ultimately a mystery writer) out of me. ... The book must be 'one of the most skillful pastiches in the history of literature. An amazing piece of work, whomever did it'."[5]

    Disliking arguments with

    pon farr, the Vulcan mating ritual, the sentence "Live long and prosper"[7] and the Vulcan hand symbol. Sturgeon also wrote several Star Trek scripts that were never produced. One of these first introduced the Prime Directive
    .

    He also wrote an episode of the Saturday morning show

    Marvel comic book, and alternative rock band of the same name, as well as becoming the colloquial name for Marvin Heemeyer
    's 2004 bulldozer rage incident.

    Sturgeon published the "first stories in science fiction which dealt with homosexuality, 'The World Well Lost' [June 1953] and 'Affair with a Green Monkey' [May 1957]",[8] and sometimes put gay subtext in his work, such as the back-rub scene in "Shore Leave",[9] or in his Western story, "Scars".[10]

    Though not as well known to the general public as contemporaries like Isaac Asimov or Ray Bradbury, Sturgeon is well known among readers of mid-20th-century science fiction anthologies. At the height of his popularity in the 1950s he was the most anthologized English-language author alive.[11][12] Three Sturgeon stories were adapted for the 1950s NBC radio anthology X Minus One: "A Saucer of Loneliness" (broadcast twice}, "The Stars Are the Styx" and "Mr. Costello, Hero".

    World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement from the 1985 World Fantasy Convention.)[14]

    Sturgeon's original novels were all published between 1950 and 1961, and the bulk of his short story work dated from the 1940s and 1950s. Though he continued to write through 1983, his work rate dipped noticeably in the later years of his life; a 1971 story collection entitled Sturgeon Is Alive and Well... addressed Sturgeon's seeming withdrawal from the public eye in a tongue-in-cheek manner. Sturgeon lived for several years in

    Sacred Heart General Hospital in the neighboring city of Eugene.[15]

    He was a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the

    Kurt Vonnegut.[16]

    Sturgeon's Law

    Main article: Sturgeon's law

    In 1951, Sturgeon coined what is now known as

    Sturgeon's Law
    :

    "Ninety percent of [science fiction] is crud, but then, ninety percent of everything is crud."

    This was originally known as Sturgeon's Revelation; Sturgeon has said that "Sturgeon's Law" was originally

    "Nothing is always absolutely so."[citation needed]

    However, the former statement is now widely referred to as Sturgeon's Law. He is also known for his dedication to a credo of critical thinking that challenged all normative assumptions: "Ask the next question." He represented this credo by the symbol of a Q with an arrow through it, an example of which he wore around his neck and used as part of his signature in the last 15 years of his life.[citation needed]

    Life and family

    Theodore's birth father, Edward Waldo, was a color and dye manufacturer of middling success. With his second wife, Anne, he had one daughter, Joan. Theodore's mother, Christine Hamilton Dicker (Waldo) Sturgeon, was a well-educated writer, watercolorist, and poet who published journalism, poetry, and fiction under the name Felix Sturgeon. His stepfather, William Dickie Sturgeon (sometimes known as Argyll), was a mathematics teacher at a prep school and then Romance Languages Professor at Drexel Institute (later

    Drexel Institute of Technology) in Philadelphia. Sturgeon's account of his stepfather is included in a posthumous memoir.[17] Sturgeon's sibling, Peter Sturgeon, wrote technical material for the pharmaceutical industry and the WHO, and founded the American branch of Mensa
    .

    Sturgeon held a wide variety of jobs during his lifetime. As an adolescent, he wanted to be a circus

    drydock) for the US Army in the early war years, and by 1944 was an advertising copywriter. In addition to freelance fiction and television writing, in New York City he opened his own literary agency[18] (which was eventually transferred to Scott Meredith), worked for Fortune magazine and other Time Inc. properties on circulation, and edited various publications. Sturgeon had somewhat irregular output, frequently suffering from writer's block
    .

    Sturgeon played guitar and wrote music which he sometimes performed at science fiction conventions.

    Sturgeon was married three times, had two long-term committed relationships outside of marriage, divorced once, and fathered a total of seven children.

    • His first wife was Dorothe Fillingame (married 1940, divorced 1945) with whom he had two daughters, Patricia and Cynthia.
    • He was married to singer Mary Mair from 1949 until an annulment in 1951.
    • In 1953, he wed Marion McGahan with whom he had a son, Robin (b. 1952); daughters Tandy (b. 1954) and Noël (b. 1956); and son Timothy (b. 1960). The children in "Tandy's Story" (1961) have the same names as these children.[19]
    • In 1969, he began living with Wina Golden, a journalist, with whom he had a son, Andros.[20][21]
    • Finally, his last long-term committed relationship was with writer and educator Jayne Englehart Tannehill, with whom he remained until the time of his death. Jayne Englehart had her own biological son, Mark J. Englehart, prior to her partnership with Sturgeon, to whom Sturgeon became like a stepfather.

    Sturgeon was a lifelong

    lung fibrosis may have been caused by exposure to asbestos
    during his merchant marine years.

    Novels

    Novelizations

    Sturgeon, under his own name, was hired to write novelizations of the following movies based on their scripts (links go to articles about the movies):

    Pseudonymous novels

    • I, Libertine (1956): Historical novel created as a for-hire hoax. Credited to "Frederick R. Ewing", written from a premise by Jean Shepherd.
    • The Player on The Other Side (1963): Mystery novel credited to
      ghost-written
      with Queen's assistance and supervision.

    Short stories

    Sturgeon published numerous short story collections during his lifetime, many drawing on his most prolific writing years of the 1940s and 1950s.

    Note that some reprints of these titles (especially paperback editions) may cut one or two stories from the line-up. Statistics herein refer to the original editions only.

    Collections published during Sturgeon's lifetime

    The following table includes sixteen volumes (one of them collecting western stories). These are considered "original" collections of Sturgeon material, in that they compiled previously uncollected stories. However, some volumes did contain a few reprinted stories: this list includes books that collected only previously uncollected material, as well as those volumes that collected mostly new material, but also contained up to three stories (representing no more than half the book) that were previously published in a Sturgeon collection.

    Title Year Number
    of stories         		previously
    collected         		Originally published
    Earliest story Latest story
    Without Sorcery 1948 13 1939 1947
    E Pluribus Unicorn 1953 13 1947 1953
    A Way Home 1955 11 1946 1955
    Caviar 1955 7 1 1941 1955
    A Touch of Strange 1958 11 1953 1958
    Aliens 4 1959 4 1944 1958
    Beyond 1960 6 1941 1960
    Sturgeon In Orbit 1964 5 1951 1955
    Starshine 1966 6 3 1940 1961
    Sturgeon Is Alive and Well ... 1971 11 1954 1971
    The Worlds of Theodore Sturgeon 1972 10 3 1941 1962
    Sturgeon's West (westerns) 1973 7 1949 1973
    Case and the Dreamer 1974 3 1962 1973
    Visions and Venturers 1978 8 1 1942 1965
    The Stars Are The Styx 1979 10 1 1951 1971
    The Golden Helix 1979 10 3 1941 1973

    The following six collections consisted entirely of reprints of previously collected material:

    Title Year Stories Notes
    Number Earliest Latest
    Thunder and Roses 1957 8 1946 1955 selected from 11 in 1955's "A Way Home"
    Not Without Sorcery 1961 8 1939 1941 selected from 13 in 1948's Without Sorcery
    The Joyous Invasions 1965 3 1955 1958 selected from 4 in 1959's "Aliens 4"
    To Here and the Easel 1973 6 1941 1958
    Maturity 1979 3 1947 1958
    Alien Cargo 1984 14 1940 1956

    Complete short stories

    Paul Williams
    and, in the last two volumes, Sturgeon's daughter Noël.

    • Volume I – The Ultimate Egoist (1937 to 1940)
    • Volume II – Microcosmic God (1940 to 1941)
    • Volume III – Killdozer (1941 to 1946)
    • Volume IV – Thunder and Roses (1946 to 1948)
    • Volume V – The Perfect Host (1948 to 1950)
    • Volume VI – Baby is Three (1950 to 1952)
    • Volume VII – A Saucer of Loneliness (1953)
    • Volume VIII – Bright Segment (1953 to 1955, as well as two "lost" stories from 1946)
    • Volume IX – And Now the News... (1955 to 1957)
    • Volume X – The Man Who Lost the Sea (1957 to 1960)
    • Volume XI – The Nail and the Oracle (1961 to 1969)
    • Volume XII – Slow Sculpture (1970 to 1972, plus one 1954 novella and one unpublished story)
    • Volume XIII – Case and The Dreamer (1972 to 1983, plus one 1960 story and three unpublished stories)

    Representative short stories

    Sturgeon was best known for his short stories and novellas. The best-known include:

    Autobiography

    • Argyll: A Memoir (pamphlet, Sturgeon Project, 1993), an autobiographical sketch about Sturgeon's relationship with his stepfather. Introduction by his editor Paul Williams. Afterword by
      Donna Nassar. The memoir, written for his psychotherapist, has many suggestions about his life, starting from his family's move from Staten Island to Philadelphia when his stepfather got a job at Drexel University and Sturgeon and his brother were still in the local public school to their attempts to catch poison ivy to delay the move—"Then we moved to Philadelphia, a little apartment on 34 Street with a sort of sun room, which was Argyll's study and had a single couch which was his and Mother's bed, and a kind of living room with a kitchenette built into one wall, where we slept on the floor on mattresses."— and his father's treatment of a puppy he couldn't discipline—"... he used to whip her with a wire after rubbing her nose in it—so he got rid of her" (p. 14). These go on to include Sturgeon's first gay experiences in his 14th year—"So [20-year-old] Bert blew me practically continuously from Friday evening until dinner time Sunday; we kept score and I came 14 times. Sweet are the uses of respectability. My God! It never occurred to me until this minute that Dr. Taft was probably the one—the only one, as sole mentor, who could possibly have insured Argyll's total ignorance!" (p. 52); and in his long letter to his mother and Argyll, included in the same volume, Sturgeon harshly critiques his first novel, The Dreaming Jewels
      : "My use of one detested Argyll would have been fine, but one wasn't enough; there had to be two, and as a result the balance of the work was destroyed and its literary worth was lost in vengeful polemic" (p. 62).

    Relationship with Kurt Vonnegut

    Kurt Vonnegut based the name of his fictional science-fiction writer Kilgore Trout on Sturgeon's name.[22] They became friends when Sturgeon moved to Truro, Massachusetts.

    See also

    Citations

    1. ^ a b Theodore Sturgeon at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB). Retrieved 2013-04-18.
    2. ^ Moskowitz, Samuel. Seekers of Tomorrow: Masters of Modern Science Fiction. Westport, Connecticut: Hyperion Press, 1974. Print. Pages 229-248.
    3. ^ "Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame" Archived 2013-05-21 at the Wayback Machine. Mid American Science Fiction and Fantasy Conventions, Inc. Retrieved 2013-03-26. This was the official website of the hall of fame to 2004.
    4. ^ Williams, Paul (1976). "Theodore Sturgeon, Storyteller" Archived 2003-09-13 at the Wayback Machine. First published 1997, online. Retrieved 2013-03-26.
      Quote: "Sturgeon because that was the stepfather's name—he was a professor of modern languages at Drexel Institute in Philadelphia—and Theodore because Edward was the boy's father's name and the mother was still bitter and anyway young Edward had always been known as Teddy."
      Quote: "To this day, libraries all over the world list 'Theodore Sturgeon' as a pseudonym for 'E. H. Waldo', which is incorrect."
    5. ^ a b Keating, H. R. F. (1989). The Bedside Companion to Crime. New York: Mysterious Press.
    6. ISBN 9781135228361. Archived
      from the original on January 5, 2024. Retrieved October 20, 2020.
    7. ^ Nimoy (1995), p. 67.
    8. ^ Duncan, David D. (1979). "The Push from Within: The Extrapolative Ability of Theodore Sturgeon" Archived 2019-10-19 at the Wayback Machine. First published 1979, print. Retrieved 2020-03-20.
      Quote: "first stories in science fiction which dealt with homosexuality, 'The World Well Lost' and 'Affair With a Green Monkey'"
    9. S2CID 193714832
      .
    10. ISBN 0-8161-1832-9
      .
    11. ^ Engel, Joel (June 1, 1994). Gene Roddenberry: The Myth and the Man Behind Star Trek. Hyperion. p. 92.
      ISBN 0786860049
      . Theodore Sturgeon, the most anthologized writer in the English language but one who'd never written for television before Star Trek, received several long letters and memos from Roddenberry.
    12. ^ Meehan, Paul (November 1, 1998). Saucer Movies: A UFOlogical History of the Cinema. Scarecrow Press. p. 166.
      ISBN 0810835738
      . Veteran science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon, reportedly the most anthologized science fiction writer of all time, wrote the teleplay adaptation of his own short story for the ABC-TV movie Killdozer (1974).
    13. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived
      from the original on December 11, 2018. Retrieved December 12, 2018.
    14. ^ "Sturgeon, Theodore" Archived 2012-10-16 at the
      Locus Publications
      . Retrieved 2013-03-26.
    15. ^ a b Portal, Ann (May 10, 1985). "Famed author, award-winner, dies in Eugene". The Register-Guard. Eugene, Oregon. Archived from the original on March 4, 2021. Retrieved June 20, 2011.
    16. ^ "Interview with Vonnegut". Archived from the original on January 15, 1998. Retrieved April 4, 2013. "I think it's funny when someone is named after a fish"
    17. ISBN 978-0934558167
    18. ISBN 1556433980
      .
    19. ^ Sturgeon, Theodore (April 1961). "Tandy's Story". Galaxy Science Fiction. pp. 170–194.
    20. ^ Noël Sturgeon [daughter], "Story Notes Volume XII", Sturgeon (2009), pp. 289–92.
    21. ^ Sturgeon (1978), p. 12.
    22. OCLC 902771331.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
      )

    General and cited sources

    External links

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