“Of all the—I don’t know whether to laugh in your face or punch you right in the mouth!”
She rose. He hadn’t realized she was quite this tall. “I’d better go.”
“Come on now. You know a figure of speech when you hear one.”
“Oh, I didn’t feel threatened. But—I’d better go, all the same.”
Shrewdly, he asked her, “Are you afraid to ask the next question?”
“Terrified.”
“Ask it anyway.”
“No!”
“Then I’ll do it for you. You said I was angry—and afraid. You want to know what I’m afraid of.”
“Yes.”
“You. I am scared to death of you.”
“Are you really?”
“You have a way of provoking honesty,” he said with some difficulty. “I’ll say what I know you’re thinking; I’m afraid of any close human relationship. I’m afraid of something I can’t take apart with a screwdriver or a mass spectroscope or a table of cosines and tangents.” His voice was jocular but his hands were shaking.
“You do it by watering one side,” she said softly, “or by turning it just so in the sun. You handle it as if it were a living thing, like a species or a woman or a bonsai. It will be what you want it to be if you let it be itself and take the time and the care.”
“I think,” he said, “that you are making me some kind of offer. Why?”
“Sitting there most of the night,” she said, “I had a crazy kind of image. Do you think two sick twisted trees ever made bonsai out of one another?”
“What’s your name?” he asked her.
A Biography of Theodore Sturgeon
Theodore Hamilton Sturgeon (1918–1985) is the acclaimed author of eleven novels and more than two hundred short stories. Considered to be among the most influential writers of science fiction’s “Golden Age,” he won the International Fantasy Award for his novel More Than Human, and the Hugo and Nebula Awards for his short story “Slow Sculpture.”
Born Edward Hamilton Waldo in Staten Island, New York, Sturgeon was the son of Edward Molineaux Waldo, a paint and dye manufacturer, and Christine Hamilton Waldo, a teacher. At the age of eleven, following his mother’s remarriage, his name was legally changed to Theodore Sturgeon.
Sturgeon began writing stories and poems during the three years he spent working as an engine room laborer on a freighter. Beginning in 1938, he published short stories for genre and general market publications including Astounding (now Analog Science Fiction and Fact), Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction, and Argosy. His groundbreaking short story “The World Well Lost” (1953), which was among the first science fiction stories to include positive themes of homosexuality, went on to win the Gaylactic Spectrum Award in 2000.
Sturgeon’s 1953 novel More Than Human was considered groundbreaking for science fiction in its stylistic daring, fine characterization, and visionary impact. Offering the idea that the next step in human evolution was a gestalt organism composed of people with different and strange talents who “bleshed,” More Than Human was an inspiration to many in the 1960s counterculture, including artists and musicians such as the Grateful Dead and Crosby, Stills and Nash.
In the 1960s, Sturgeon ventured into television writing, penning the screenplays for two of the most popular Star Trek episodes: “Shore Leave” (1966) and “Amok Time” (1967). He is credited with inventing the story of Spock’s sex life, as well as the famous Vulcan greeting, “Live long and prosper,” and (with Leonard Nimoy) its accompanying hand signal. Two of Sturgeon’s stories were adapted for The New Twilight Zone, and his novella Killdozer! (1944) became a television movie in 1974. He is also the creator of Sturgeon’s Law—90 percent of everything is crap—which he developed to counter the common denigration of science fiction as a genre.
Beloved by critics and readers alike, Sturgeon inspired a generation of authors across genres, such as Samuel R. Delany, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Octavia E. Butler, Karen Joy Fowler, and Rad Bradbury. Kurt Vonnegut considered Sturgeon to be one of the best writers in America, and Sturgeon served as inspiration for Vonnegut’s recurring character, Kilgore Trout.
Survived by his seven children, Sturgeon died in Eugene, Oregon, on May 8, 1985. In 2000, he was posthumously inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.
The decree wherein Sturgeon is officially adopted by his stepfather (William “Argyll” D. Sturgeon) and his mother, and his last name is changed accordingly, from “Waldo” to “Sturgeon.” (Photo courtesy of Special Collections, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas.)
Sturgeon’s report card from the Pennsylvania State Nautical Schoolship “Annapolis” postmarked April 10, 1937, showing his rank as last in his class of cadets. (Photo courtesy of Special Collections, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas.)
Sturgeon with his third wife, Marion McGahan, and (left to right) daughter Tandy (b. 1954), son Robin (b. 1952), and daughter Noël (b. 1956).
A typescript page from More Than Human with handwritten edits. (Photo courtesy of Special Collections, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas.)
A page from Sturgeon’s “inspiration file.” (Photo courtesy of Special Collections, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas.)
Notes, dated 6/12/66 and entitled “Spock Blows Top,” for an episode of Star Trek that Sturgeon wrote, ultimately titled “Amok Time.” (Photo courtesy of Special Collections, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas.)
Sturgeon in his library.
The Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award trophy, designed by Elden Tefft. The Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas presents the award annually for the genre’s best short stories of the year. (Photo courtesy of the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction.)
From left to right, author N. K. Jemisin; Noël Sturgeon, Theodore’s daughter and trustee of the Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust; and author Samuel R. Delany at a May 4, 2011, tribute to Sturgeon, sponsored by the New York Review of Science Fiction. (Photo courtesy of Marc Blackman.)
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2000 by the Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust
Cover design by Mauricio Diaz
978-1-4804-1051-0
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THE COMPLETE STORIES SERIES
I. The Ultimate Egoist (1994)
II. Microcosmic God (1995)
III. Killdozer! (1996)
IV. Thunder and Roses (1997)
V. The Perfect Host (1998)
VI. Baby Is Three (1999)
VII. A Sau
cer of Loneliness (2000)
VIII. Bright Segment (2002)
IX. And Now the News… (2003)
X. The Man Who Lost the Sea (2005)
XI. The Nail and the Oracle (2007)
XII. Slow Sculpture (2009)
XIII. Case and the Dreamer (2010)
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Selected Stories Page 51