His relationship with Jayne began an extremely happy and productive stage of Sturgeon’s life during which, though he wrote few stories, he became deeply involved in teaching writing and presenting at science-fiction conventions around the country. He loved to work with students, especially young writers, a role well suited to him as a charismatic legend with a message (as former students such as Octavia Butler have fondly recalled). He taught summer courses for several years at the Intensive English Institute on the Teaching of Science Fiction, run by James Gunn and hosted by the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. (Gunn later helped establish the annual Sturgeon Short Story Award in 1987, one of the most prestigious awards in science fiction.) Sturgeon also taught short writing courses at other colleges and made public presentations around the U.S. and in Europe, particularly France, Ireland, and England. His dizzying travel schedule for the last years of his life was thoroughly organized by Jayne, and not incidentally, began to pay his debts. In 1982, a French TV series, De bien estranges, aired an episode, “L’amour qui tue,” based on the short story, “The Wages of Synergy” (Volume Seven). The organization of his papers by Jayne made possible the publication of four new collections of Sturgeon stories: Visions and Venturers (1978), The Stars Are the Styx (1979), The Golden Helix (1979), and Alien Cargo (1984); the latter three collections were inspired and edited by Paul Williams, and can be seen as an early attempt by Paul to find a way to republish many of Sturgeon’s difficult-to-find short stories, which culminated in The Complete Stories project.
From 1976 to 1985, after a brief period of living in San Diego, Jayne and Ted shuttled regularly between Los Angeles (where his son Andros lived) and Springfield, Oregon. Diagnosed in 1976 as suffering from idiopathic diffuse interstitial fibrosis of the lungs, by 1984, Sturgeon found it harder and harder to breathe and engage in regular activities. In January of 1985, he went alone to Maui to try an alternative healing regimen. When it was apparent that the regimen was failing, he returned to Springfield, very ill. He died in the hospital in Eugene on May 8, 1985. Present were Jayne; two family friends, Charles Holloway and Rennie Cantine; six of his seven children (Patricia, Robin, Tandy, Noël, Timothy, and Andros); and his third wife, Marion. He was 67. With a strange prescience, one of his most famous and beloved stories, “The Man Who Lost the Sea” (Volume 10), contains a detailed description of how it feels to die from lack of air.
After Sturgeon’s death, obituaries in The New York Times, many regional papers, Locus Magazine and other science fiction outlets recognized his stature as a writer, and his significant influence on the field of science fiction as well as the broader culture. Two Twilight Zone episodes were aired in 1986, “A Saucer of Loneliness” (Sturgeon claimed that Mama Cass of the pop group Mamas and the Papas was a special fan of “A Saucer of Loneliness” [Volume Seven], and when approached about filming it, he recommended that she play the part of the female protagonist. The Twilight Zone episode, written by David Gerrold, had Shelley Duvall in the main role), and “A Matter of Minutes” (based on his story “Yesterday Was Monday” [Volume 2] and written by Harlan Ellison® and Rockne S. O’Bannon). In 2000, he was awarded the Gaylactica Spectrum Award for his ground-breaking 1953 story about homosexuality, “The World Well Lost” (Volume 7). Also, in 2000, Sturgeon was elected to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, now based in the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle, which displays several Sturgeon-related objects, including the portrait of Sturgeon painted by Ed Emshwiller which was used as the cover for the collection E Pluribus Unicorn (1953) as well as Volume 7 of this series, a letter from Heinlein to Sturgeon suggesting story ideas, and a copy of the Pioneer 10 plaque from the Apollo mission signed to Ted by Carl Sagan, one of its designers. (The Pioneer 10 and 11 unmanned space missions were the first to travel past the solar system into deep space, and the plaques were designed to communicate our location and physique to alien intelligences. A few of the plaques were given to artists, writers and musicians who in Sagan’s judgment were influential representatives of human cultural production; Sturgeon was one of them.) In 2005, a play based on his story, “The Graveyard Reader” (Volume Ten), ran as part of the Theater Phantastique at the Wooden-O Theater in Los Angeles. In 2005, Jon Knautz directed a short film from the short story “The Other Celia” (Volume Nine); it aired on the Canadian Broadcasting Company in January 2008. Consistently appearing on numerous “best of sf” lists, More Than Human has been in print since it was published in 1953, and Sturgeon’s fiction continues to be sold around the world.
“Tuesdays are Worse” (Chatelaine: The Canadian Home Journal, vol 33, no 1, January 1960). Teaser: “Les lived with a fear he could not talk about. It followed him home, to be borne though not understood by Angela and their child … until that night. A story no married couple should miss.” The abusive behavior of the father in this story recalls Sturgeon’s description of his treatment as a child by his stepfather, found in the autobiographical essay Argyll (1993). My thanks to William F. Seabrook, Sturgeon bibliographer extraordinaire, for finding this story in time to include it.
“Case and the Dreamer” (Galaxy, January 1973) Reprinted in Case and the Dreamer (Doubleday 1974), which also contained the novellas “If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?” and “When You Care, When You Love” (both in Volume Eleven). “Case” was written originally as a pilot for NBC. The dedication to the Doubleday volume reads: “For Herb Solow, without whom Case would never have been written.” Herb Solow was an agent, TV producer and at one time head of MGM Studios. He met Sturgeon when he worked for Desilu Studios, which produced Star Trek. “Case and the Dreamer” was never completed as a pilot.
“Agnes, Accent and Access” (Galaxy, April 1973) Teaser: “The computer knew the answer to everything—except Agnes!” Written many years before desktop or laptop computers were invented, this detailed imagination of such a device reads more and more over time like the machines we use today. Perhaps subvocalization of voice-directed typing programs is one step away. Sturgeon’s third wife, Marion, grew up in the Bronx, and though she did not usually have a noticeable accent, it could be brought out under times of stress, an effect her children delighted in producing. (An irony is that many of the stories in these last two volumes were put into electronic form through the use of MacSpeech Dictate, a voice-directed program that consistently mishears my New York-inflected pronunciation of “orange” as “are range.”)
“Ingenious Aylmer” (Harper’s, December 1973) This is one of two very short stories featuring the character Ejler Edgar Aylmer, an eccentric genius who works in his basement.
“The Sheriff of Chayute” (Sturgeon’s West, Doubleday 1973). The series of western stories of which “Sheriff” is one were credited “with Don Ward,” but as made clear for the earlier stories published in Volumes 10 and 11, they were written solely by Sturgeon, sometimes from ideas bounced off his friend Ward, the editor of Zane Grey’s Western Magazine.
“The Mysterium” (Circa 1974–1976. Previously unpublished.) The original manuscript is typed on the letterhead with two unicorns most commonly used during the period in the middle 1970s when Sturgeon lived in the small apartment on Vendome Street in Los Angeles. Though he kept this apartment after 1976, when he began his relationship with Jayne Williams and began to spend time in San Diego and then in Eugene, Oregon, it is likely that this story was written earlier than that time. Sturgeon’s invention of a noun “woodstocker,” and verb “woodstocking” as describing making a living from music festivals is interesting, because of his time spent living in Woodstock, NY in the early and middle 1960s. It is possible that this story is unfinished.
“ ‘I Love Maple Walnut’ ” (Harper’s, May 1974) This is the second very short story written about the inventor Ejler Edgar Aylmer. William F. Seabrook provides the following note of interest about the Harper’s stories: “They appeared in a section of the magazine called ‘Wraparound,’ a series of pieces relating to a common the
me. One month the theme was Love, and along with [Sturgeon’s] short-short story [‘ “I Love Maple Walnut” ’], they published ‘The Irish Girl’s Lament’; as this was also included in, and gave the title for, [the Sturgeon story] ‘And My Fear Is Great,’ [Volume Seven] surely this must have been at his suggestion.” (Seabrook, personal communication) Sturgeon indeed constantly promoted “The Irish Girl’s Lament” as one of the most beautiful statements written about love, in his opinion, and it is quoted in full in the story “And My Fear Is Great.” The poem was collected by W.B. Yeats, and is used in the movie version of James Joyce’s “The Dead,” directed by John Huston.
“Blue Butter” (Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1974) Teaser: “From the one writer in this issue whose name also appeared on the front cover of Vol. 1, No. 1, Fall 1949, a small story with a huge theme, about the day in which a computer reads out the Final Extrapolation. Ladies and Gentlemen, Theodore Sturgeon …” In an incident that mirrors the one in the story, in 1968, Sturgeon’s fourteen-year old daughter Tandy accidentally ran through a plate glass door and suffered multiple wounds and extensive bleeding. Sturgeon was present and administered first aid, possibly saving her life.
“The Singsong of Cecily Snow” (Heavy Metal, October 1977) An example of Sturgeon’s lyrical fantasy writing, reminiscent of his “unicorn story,” “The Silken-Swift,” (Volume 7) which is discussed by Peter S. Beagle in his introduction to this volume.
“Harry’s Note” (Chrysalis, Roy Torgeson, ed., Zebra 1977) Another example of Sturgeon’s belief that empathy (or love) is a key to human evolution and survival, but in a very pessimistic rendering. Did Sturgeon really meet Leary, Metzner, and Alpert in Woodstock? There was indeed a Café Espresso in the town, and Leary, and possibly the others, were often at Millbrook, just across the Hudson River from the Woodstock area. As Sturgeon was fond of saying after recounting an improbable version of what had actually happened, “it could have been.” The evocation of the Golden Rule with the phrase: “do as you would be done by” echoes of one of Sturgeon’s favorite children’s books, The Water Babies, by Charles Kingsley (1862–63), which featured a good fairy, Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby and a bad fairy, Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid. The phrase “Thou art God,” of course, evokes the famous Robert A. Heinlein novel, Strangers in a Strange Land (1961). Sturgeon and Heinlein were good friends, and though they disagreed politically (particularly about the economy and about the necessity of war), they shared an interest in challenging social strictures on nudity and sex, and a strong distaste for organized religion. Heinlein named his fictional character “Waldo” and the manipulative devices Waldo invents “waldoes” in honor of Sturgeon’s birthname (Sturgeon was born Edward Hamilton Waldo). The term “waldoes” took and is still in use in scientific laboratories today. Sturgeon named a character in his story “The Other Man” (Volume 9) “Anson,” Heinlein’s middle name, in gratitude for Heinlein’s suggesting the story idea to him. Resonances of this long relationship, and the close parallels between Sturgeon’s novel Godbody, and Heinlein’s Stranger, are also apparent in two stories in this volume: “The Country of Afterward,” and “The Trick,” below. Heinlein died three years to the day after Sturgeon, on May 8, 1988.
“Time Warp” (Omni Magazine, October 1978; Reprinted in the Best of Omni Science Fiction No. 2, Ben Bova, ed., Omni Pub, 1981). Teaser from the original: “She was held by a force beam and bending over her was one of the members of the Mindpod.” Editorial afterword from Ben Bova and Robert Myrus, in the Best of Omni collection: “Theodore Sturgeon, prominent SF short story writer for more than thirty years and author of several novels, most notably More Than Human, an International Fantasy Award winner, is famous as a stylist and for his preoccupation with the ameliorating power of love. In ‘Time Warp,’ Sturgeon seems to be saying that in both matters of politics and of the heart, sometimes the way to get ahead is to go along.” The character Will Hawkline, the epitome of the macho hero, is presented by Sturgeon as constantly endangering his allies through his aggressive and egotistic tendencies. Hawkline could be seen as a (fond) critique of “space opera” science fiction, with Captain James T. Kirk as possibly the most recent example in his mind, given Sturgeon’s experience on the Star Trek set (where he made good friends of many of the cast of the first Star Trek series). In both of the televised Star Trek scripts written by Sturgeon, “Shore Leave” and “Amok Time,” the plots feature Kirk’s physical bravery and the joy he finds in one-on-one fighting, as well as the risks to others involved in his attraction to violence and heroic deeds.
“The Country of Afterward” (Hustler, January 1979) Sturgeon writes, in a 1978 letter to his agent, Kirby McCauley: “I have just sold Larry Flynt [publisher of Hustler] pubs my very first explicit sex story. It’s a blockbuster with a great many important things to say during the bumps and moans.” The theme of this story echoes the ideas in Sturgeon’s posthumously published novel, Godbody (1986), which he worked on from the early 1960s. That sex and love were forms of spiritual worship, and that the open exploration and expression of the relationship between them would cure many of the world’s ills (including war, cancer, inequality and exploitation), was one of Sturgeon’s enduring beliefs and a constant message in much of his writing. This argument, along with the other repeated theme of human connection and gestalt, was an important influence on the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s (see David Crosby’s introduction to Volume 6). The characters in this story remind this reader, at least, of Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land; an older, powerful man is adored by sexy young women, who, although talented, highly educated people with advanced professional degrees, seem to prefer spending most of their time having sex with older men as a means to create a better world.
“Like Yesterday” (Rolling Stone, May 20, 1979) Certainly a story that reverberates today, as the movement to legalize marijuana gains strength. Sturgeon was not a pot smoker himself, claiming that he didn’t get much of a high when he did try it.
“Why Dolphins Don’t Bite” (Omni, in three parts, published February, March and April, 1980), reprinted in Medea’s World (Harlan Ellison®, ed., Phantasia 1985). Written as part of the collaborative venture started by Harlan Ellison®, in which several science-fiction writers wrote stories based in a common setting, Medea’s World. Some of the ideas in this story are shocking (for example, that cannibalism and incest might confer important powers of interstellar, interspecies and time-travelling communication), demonstrating Sturgeon’s comfort with imagining truly horrible things (as exemplified by such horror tales as “It,” “Bianca’s Hands” (both in Volume 1), “The Professor’s Teddy Bear” (Volume Four), and Some of Your Blood (1961). “Dolphins” also repeats a theme that appears in many places in Sturgeon’s work (as noted by Paul Williams in his essay in this volume): that humans are excluded from an ability held by other species across the universe to simultaneously and immediately access ideas, skills, and information from collectively produced sources (See “Time Warp” [in this volume], “The Skills of Xanadu” [Volume 9], To Marry Medusa, “The Touch of Your Hand” [Volume 7], and More Than Human). Had Sturgeon lived seven more years, he would have experienced the World-Wide Web, which in many ways—especially email, search engines and wikis—realizes this persistent vision of instantaneous sharing of information and global communication. Given the questions raised in this story, would Sturgeon have judged the Internet to be crucifix or pogo-stick?
“Vengeance Is.” (Dark Forces, Kirby McCauley, ed., Viking 1980). Editor’s introduction: “Theodore Sturgeon, born on Staten Island, New York, old American stock dating back to 1640, is one of the acknowledged masters of modern fantasy and science fiction, both in his short work and in such fine novels as More Than Human and The Dreaming Jewels. His styles are many: witty, spare, hard-boiled, and lyrically expressive. He’s a remarkably inventive and powerful writer and there is reason to suspect his best stories will be remembered long after those of nearly all now posing for posterity and academic
circles and in the literary quarterlies. Harlan Ellison once observed that Theodore Sturgeon knows more about love than anyone he’d ever met. And, in fact, the Sturgeon you might meet is earnest, warm, and sympathetic, a man whom you immediately feel cares and understands. But, as the story testifies, he also understands the hurtful, twisted the side of human nature.” Written with the example of candida in mind, this story predates the appearance of HIV/AIDS, but Sturgeon was amazed at the resonances of the story with that epidemic when it occurred. (Personal communication, Jayne Williams.)
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