Theodore Sturgeon

Theodore Sturgeon (February 26, 1918 Staten Island, New York – May 8, 1985) was an American science fiction author. He was born Edward Hamilton Waldo; in 1929, after a divorce, his mother married William Sturgeon, and Edward changed his name to Theodore the better to match his nickname, "Ted".

He sold his first story in 1938 to the newspaper McClure's Syndicate which bought much of his early (non-fantastic) work; his first genre appearance was "Ether Breather" in Astounding Science Fiction a year later. At first he wrote mainly short stories, primarily for genre magazines such as Astounding and Unknown, but also for general-interest publications such as 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". He once ghosted an Ellery Queen novel, The Player on the Other Side (Random House, 1963).

Fantastic Adventures, August 1951, featuring Sturgeon's story "Excalibur and the Atom" (cover art by Robert Gibson Jones).

Many of Sturgeon's works have a poetic, even an elegiac, quality. He was known to use a technique known as "rhythmic prose", in which his prose text would drop into a standard meter. This has the effect of creating a subtle shift in mood, usually without alerting the reader to its cause.

His most famous novel More Than Human (1953) won serious academic recognition particularly in Europe, where it was seen as high-quality literature.

Sturgeon wrote the screenplays for the Star Trek episodes "Shore Leave" (1966) and "Amok Time" (1967, later published in book form in 1978). The latter is known for his invention of the Pon farr, the Vulcan mating ritual. Sturgeon also wrote several episodes of Star Trek that were never produced. One of these was notable for having first introduced the Prime Directive. He also wrote an episode of the Saturday morning show Land of the Lost, "The Pylon Express", in 1975. Two of Sturgeon's stories were adapted for The New Twilight Zone. One, "A Saucer of Loneliness", was broadcast in 1986 and was dedicated to his memory. His 1944 novel, "Killdozer", was the inspiration for the 1970's made-for-TV movie, Marvel comic book, and alternative rock band of the same name.

Although Sturgeon is well known among readers of classic science-fiction anthologies (at the height of his popularity in the 1950s he was the most anthologized author alive) and much respected by critics (John Clute writes in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: "His influence upon writers like Harlan Ellison and Samuel R. Delany was seminal, and in his life and work he was a powerful and generally liberating influence in post-WWII US sf"), he is not much known among the general public and won comparatively few awards (though it must be noted that his best work was published before the establishment and consolidation of the leading genre awards, while his later production was scarcer and weaker). He was listed as a primary influence of the much more famous Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Kurt Vonnegut has stated that his character Kilgore Trout was based on Theodore Sturgeon.

Sturgeon's Law

Sturgeon's Law is: "Nothing is always absolutely so."

However this term is more often used for Sturgeon's Revelation: "Ninety percent of SF is crud, but then, ninety percent of everything is crud."

Corollary 1: "The existence of immense quantities of trash in science fiction is admitted and is regrettable; but it is no more unnatural than the existence of trash anywhere."

Corollary 2: "The best science fiction is as good as the best fiction in any field."

Bibliography

novels:
* The Dreaming Jewels (1950, also published as or The Synthetic Man )
* More Than Human (1953, fixup of three linked novellas) - winner of the International Fantasy Award
* The King and Four Queens (1956)
* I, Libertine (1956, for-hire hoax as "Frederick R. Ewing")
* To Marry Medusa (1958), also published as The Cosmic Rape
* Venus Plus X (1960)
* Some of Your Blood (1961)
* Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (novelization of the movie of the same name, based on an early draft of the script) (1961)
* The Rare Breed (1966, Western)
* Godbody (1986)

Sturgeon was better known for his short stories and novellas. Here is a sampling of titles:
* "Ether Breather" (September, 1939, his first published science-fiction story)
* "Derm Fool" (March, 1940)
* "It" (August, 1940)
* "Microcosmic God" (April, 1941)
* "Yesterday Was Monday" (1941)
* "Killdozer" (November, 1944)
* "Bianca's Hands" (May, 1947)
* "Thunder and Roses" (November, 1947)
* "The Perfect Host" (November, 1948)
* "Minority Report" (June 1949, no connection to the 2002 movie, which was based on a later story by Philip K. Dick)
* "One Foot and the Grave" (September, 1949)
* "The World Well Lost" (June, 1953)
* "Mr. Costello, Hero" (December, 1953)
* "The Skills of Xanadu" (July, 1956)
* "The Other Man" (September, 1956)
* "Need" (1960)
* "How to Forget Baseball" (Sports Illustrated December 1964)
* "The Nail and the Oracle" (Playboy October 1964)
* "Slow Sculpture" (Galaxy February 1970) - winner of a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award
* "Occam's Scalpel" (August, 1971)

North Atlantic Books has been releasing the chronologically assembled The Complete Short Stories of Theodore Sturgeon'' since 1995; volume 10, with stories from 1957-1960, was published in 2005. [1]

External links

* The Theodore Sturgeon Page - an informative fan site; includes The Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust
* Theodore Sturgeon's online fiction at Free Speculative Fiction Online