Microcosmic God

by Theodore Sturgeon

  “He failed to understand that he had struck the universal chord. Stories like ‘Shottle Bop,’ where you got what you wanted by ‘wishing,’ were good fun but nobody in this modern technological age believed them. On the contrary, a story like ‘Microcosmic God,’ where a man could get anything he wanted by logical scientific means, made possible the complete suspension of disbelief and utter absorption of the reader by the story. That was the story’s appeal.”

  In any case, the extent and durability of the story’s appeal were demonstrated in 1969, when members of the Science Fiction Writers of America were asked to vote on “the greatest science fiction stories of all time” (for inclusion in a book entitled Science Fiction Hall of Fame). “Microcosmic God” tied for #4 in total votes—one of the five best or most popular sf stories ever written (through 1965), according to a poll of “virtually everyone now living who has ever had science fiction published in the United States” (quote and voting results from Robert Silverberg’s introduction to SF Hall of Fame).

  “Microcosmic God” was included in the first paperback science fiction anthology published in the United States, The Pocket Book of Science Fiction (edited by Donald A. Wollheim) in 1943. As a result many readers associate it with their discovery of science fiction. (“The first [sf] story I read was ‘Microcosmic God’ by Theodore Sturgeon. It has sometimes occurred to me that it has all been downhill from there.”—Gene Wolfe, in his introduction to The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Vol. I)

  John W. Campbell, Jr., summarized the story well in the March 1941 Astounding (in a section where the editor talks about next month’s issue): “Theodore Sturgeon has a novellette coming up, too. The tale of a man who played god to a homemade microcosm and forgot that he still had to live and get along in his greater world himself.” His blurb for the story when it appeared (title page) was: KIDDER HAD A SYSTEM FOR INVENTING THINGS IN A HURRY—AND HE THOUGHT HE HAD A SYSTEM FOR HANDLING THE RESULTS. HIS METHOD WAS INHUMAN—BUT HIS AGENT WAS HUMAN—AND DANGEROUS!

  The unfinished early draft of “Microcosmic God,” the text of which is included at the end of these story notes, reveals that the Neoterics evolved in the author’s mind from ants … and thereby makes a small link between this story and Sturgeon’s 1953 classic “Mr. Costello, Hero”—which in turn suggests that in Sturgeon’s universe Senator Joe McCarthy and Adolf Hitler may be perceived as examples of the archetype called Mad Scientist.

  The early draft also reveals that “Microcosmic God” evolved out of a hoary “Sunday supplement reporter comes to interview eccentric inventor/scientist” plot frame that Sturgeon had been trying to use for several years (on the evidence of other unfinished story-beginnings found among the Sturgeon papers from the Staten Island trunk).

  The second sentence of the early draft casually summarizes the main gimmick of “The Anonymous,” suggesting, I guess, that when Sturgeon had something on his mind he didn’t mind repeating himself. (In fact, as in the case of his reflex put-downs of “Microcosmic God,” he was quite capable of repeating himself almost verbatim over a period of 40 years. The patience of his wives etc. is legendary.)

  “The Haunt”: first published in Unknown, April 1941. Sturgeon’s interest since childhood in building crystal radios shows up in a number of his stories, notably “The Bones” and “The Martian and the Moron.” Ghost stories (“Niobe,” “Shottle Bop,” “Ghost of a Chance”) are another recurring theme. The following quote (from a letter TS wrote his mother in October 1937) could well have been included in the notes on “Cargo” or “Turkish Delight” (Vol. I), but I think it fits here as well:

  This ship is supposed to be haunted, a propos of your remarks about the worker’s influence on his product. It seems that two people have jumped overboard from the foc’sle head where I stand my lookout watches. And for apparently no reason. I had only one unusual experience up there, but it really was something to remember. One night about three AM I was standing up there, absolutely groggy for want of sleep. I forget just why; I think that tank-mucking [work in the gas tanks, under the influence of the fumes] was responsible for it. Finally I could stand it no longer. I crawled down between the riding-chocks on the anchor-engine and went to sleep. Suddenly I found myself wide awake, in a cold sweat, and staring up into a threatening sky; I saw nothing that could have awakened me with such a start, and so lay back and dozed off. Immediately I awoke with such a jolt that it threw me right up on my feet, and then I heard, gradually fading away, and already almost imperceptible, the most extraneous possible sound for my environment. Of all impossible things, the skirling of bagpipes! I stood absolutely frozen, staring out over the bow, and there, dead ahead, at two hundred yards, the ugly stub snout of a Swedish freighter poked out of a fogbank, throwing two fountains of spray as she headed unerringly for our port bow. I whipped around to the bell behind me and rang three times (“Dead Ahead!”) and yelled “Hard left!” as loud as I could bellow. Yes, we missed her, but only just. It was one of those awful moments that you dream about, but never see the end of. We practically scraped; to be more accurate, I should say that we missed her by about 40 feet. Later, when the excitement had died down, and I had taken the wheel, the mate told me that he had seen absolutely nothing until almost a minute after I rang the bell. What would have happened if those phantom pipes had not been so insistent? Note: I never sleep on watch any more!!

  Magazine blurb (title page): IT SEEMED A GOOD IDEA TO CRACK THE CAST-IRON POISE OF THE GIRL BY A LITTLE SYNTHETIC HAUNT. SOUND EFFECTS, RADIO VARIETY, WERE INTENDED, BUT—

  “Completely Automatic”: first published in Astounding Science-Fiction, February 1941. Written fall 1940.

  Two pages of an early draft of this story survive in Sturgeon’s papers. As with the “Microcosmic God” draft, they show an author who has his basic story idea and is experimenting with how to tell it. It’s possible that these two pages were all Sturgeon wrote before rethinking the story and writing it in its present form. The early draft does not have the “one space-sailor tells another a story” narrative structure. Instead the story starts with a new, green crewman meeting his bunkmate (and being razzed by him), a very skeletal version of the Babson-meets-Fuzzy scene in the finished story. This is followed by a long, incomplete clump of exposition, concerning the funkiness of the Maggie Northern and the recent elimination of the “Apprentice Chemical Controller” job aboard this automated ore-ship. One imagines Sturgeon stopping at the bottom of the second page and saying, okay, I think I’m ready to start writing now.

  When Sturgeon wrote “Completely Automatic” and “Microcosmic God,” he had already sold at least eight fantasy stories to Unknown, but his only science fiction sales were the two “Ether Breather” stories. He was still trying to find his voice as a science fiction writer.

  Magazine blurb (from the title page): A YARN ABOUT A PERFECTLY AUTOMATIC SHIP, AND HER PERFECTLY INCOMPETENT CREW, HER HOPELESS, PRACTICALLY MINDLESS CREW TRAPPED BY HER PERFECT MECHANISMS WHEN THINGS WENT WRONG.

  “Poker Face”: first published in Astounding Science-Fiction, March 1941. Written fall 1940. Moskowitz in Seekers of Tomorrow says “Poker Face” is “historically important as one of the earliest science fiction stories based on the notion that otherworldly aliens [sic; actually in this case it’s men from the future] are living and working among us.” It could also be considered a forerunner of Arthur C. Clarke’s vision of the perfect city at the end of time, lost in a self-sustained stasis.

  Sturgeon (from Without Sorcery): No one can change my conviction that there are people among us like “Face.” Not necessarily people from his strange point of origin, but from many. The reasons these folk have for concealing themselves are more obvious than any they might have for self-advertisement. You do not attempt to alter what you see on your visits to a museum—or to a zoo …

  And later, from Alien Cargo:

  I’m so very glad to see this one back in print. Written sometime in early 1940, this and the next four were writte
n in an extraordinarily prolific (for me) period in early 1940, during which my editor, the late John Campbell, hoarded them and pieced them out; I saw none of them in print until I returned to the States after managing a hotel in Jamaica, then, when the U.S. got into the war, working as a heavy equipment operator in Jamaica (for the Army) and in Puerto Rico (for the Navy). From 1940 until late ’46 I wrote only one story (a novelette called “Killdozer!”)—six solid years of “writer’s block”—the worst I have ever known.

  But about “Poker Face,” 1940: I wonder what was in George Orwell’s mind just then, eight years before he wrote his terrifyingly prescient 1984?

  Sturgeon’s account (written in 1984) requires a few factual corrections: his “writer’s block” began in June 1941, when he moved to Jamaica; and he began writing again on a regular basis near the end of 1945.

  When Sturgeon put together his first collection of stories in 1948, he evidently did some light editing on several of the stories (one, “Maturity,” was substantially rewritten). The text included here is the book version. In the case of “Poker Face,” two sentences have been trimmed from the middle of the first paragraph of the magazine version, four sentences cut from Face’s description of how he arranged the cards, and, more significantly, there are several large cuts from Face’s description of his future city, cuts that may help explain why Sturgeon remembered his story as being related to the dystopic vision of 1984. The biggest cut starts at the end of the paragraph that starts, “I came from that city.” In the magazine it ends, Imagine it if you can—let me describe the life of an individual to you. And goes on:

  “He was born when he was needed. He was an individual from a mold. He was a certain weight, not the thousandth of a gram more or less than that of any of his contemporaries. He was fed the same food as they, slept exactly the same hours, learned precisely the same things at the same time. His pulse, mental powers, rate of metabolism, physical strength, range of vision—all were exactly the same as those of the same age. He needed no individual attention. He fought no disease, because there was no disease in the city. He was fed and clothed and housed by machines, and he was taught by them and quickly learned the way of them. When he was adult he was bred. When he was eighteen he had been schooled for two hours a day for eight years. He then spent one year working two hours a day tending one of the millions of machines that took their power from interstellar space and transmuted it into usable energies for the people and the structures. When he had finished that year he spent an hour each day for eight months in teaching the young the things he had observed about the work he had done. He gave instruction for twenty days less each year for twelve years and then died because he ceased to get fed, as there was nothing left for him to do. His body was transformed into raw materials of various kinds, with no waste. There was never any waste in the city.

  “Now the city was divided into two halves, like the halves of a great brain. One half was dedicated to the supply of power, and one to materials. There were forty-five million people in each half, equally divided in age and sex. The flawless smoothness of the city’s operation depended on the maintenance of that exact balance between supply and demand, manufacture and the means to manufacture. For every death there was a birth …”

  The paragraph that begins, “Face shook his head,” originally ended with these added sentences: Remember—it wasn’t only that these people were educated that way and brought up in those surroundings. They were bred for those traits.”

  And slightly later, the paragraph that begins “I was coming to that,” had these added sentences at the end: Now the machines which supplied the people with everything from baby pap to muscle rubs, transportation to air conditioning, naturally covered such a vast number of highly specialized fields that it was necessary to maintain quite a number of men educated along these lines. There was only one of these men detailed to each field—astronomy, astrophysics, biology, and so on. He learned what his predecessor knew and spent the years of his life learning what else he might and teaching it to the next in line.

  No text was added or rewritten for the later version, although there are additions and light rewritings on the text of another Without Sorcery story, “The Ultimate Egoist.”

  Magazine blurb (title page): “FACE” WAS A REMARKABLE POKER PLAYER. EVEN MORE REMARKABLE THAN HIS FELLOW PLAYERS THOUGHT. IT WASN’T JUST THE WAY HE STACKED DECKS—

  “Nightmare Island”: first published in Unknown, June 1941, under the pseudonym E. Waldo Hunter. This was the exciting month that Sturgeon had four stories published at the same time, two in Unknown and two in Astounding. One story in each magazine was under his name; “The Purple Light,” in Astounding, was published under the pseudonym Sturgeon had used earlier in Unknown (for “The Ultimate Egoist”), “E. Hunter Waldo.” But “Nightmare Island” was credited to “E. Waldo Hunter.” Campbell, in the next issue of Unknown, explained: “Waldo sort of forgot whether he’d put the ‘Hunter’ before or after ‘Waldo’ and we forgot to check. Hence the discrepancy of the name on ‘The Ultimate Egoist’ and ‘Nightmare Island.’ ” Sturgeon, in a letter in that same issue, says, It will no doubt surprise a great many people to learn that I was christened Edward Waldo, and that Hunter is my grandmother’s maiden name. Of course, I was only a kid at the time. The letter is signed, “E. Hunter Waldo Hunter.”

  Sam Moskowitz reports (based on his 1961 conversation with Sturgeon) that the idea for “Nightmare Island” was “derived from a reference in a 1910 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, concerning the ‘tube worm’.”

  The tropical setting of the story seems to conjure up Sturgeon’s years in Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands, but in fact it was written (and published) before he left New York. He had, however, had some transient experiences in the tropics already, traveling through the Gulf and the Florida Keys as a merchant seaman. (To his mother, 12/3/37: Now please don’t try to tempt me away from the coastwise runs again; in the first place, they are ideal for winter weather, as we are so often south of Florida. He had recently made what may have been his only Latin American run as a merchant seaman, stopping in Panama and Guatemala; but every trip between New York and Port Arthur, Texas took him through the Bahamian waters where this story probably takes place.)

  Magazine blurb (contents page): ONLY A MAN WHO’D BEEN IN HIS CONDITION FOR A LONG TIME COULD HAVE UNDERSTOOD, ACCEPTED, AND ACTED REASONABLY ON NIGHTMARE ISLAND.

  “The Purple Light”: first published in Astounding Science-Fiction, June 1941, under the psedudonym E. Hunter Waldo. A science-fictional rewrite of Sturgeon’s 1939 vignette “Watch My Smoke.”

  Magazine blurb (contents page): ONCE IN A WHILE, IT’S A SMART IDEA TO CRAWL RIGHT INTO THE MIDDLE OF TROUBLE!

  “Artnan Process”: first published in Astounding Science-Fiction, June 1941. Written early December 1940. TS to his mother, 12/6/40: This morning I finished a science-fiction opus dealing with isotope-transmutation as she is done on the third planet of the Procyon system. It will with certitude bounce: I didn’t like the idea before I started the yarn. Same letter, now 12/12/40: Ye ed. seemed to think highly enough of my vegetative-metabolistic transmutation process to pay me a hundred and a quarter for it. That pays the hospital bill and feeds us for a week, though it leaves damn little for Christmas.

  A manuscript fragment from the Sturgeon papers indicates that there was an earlier (probably incomplete) draft of this story, also starring Slimmy and Bellew, in which Mars is not a factor; the cheap power deal is directly between Artna and Earth.

  Introduction from Without Sorcery (1948):

  This opus, sheer “spaced-opera,” [sic; changed in the paperback version to “space-opera,” a familiar sf term for clichéd or old-fashioned science fiction melodramas] is included here primarily because with it I can modestly take my place among the prognosticators. Based on the problem of isotope separation, it was written three years before the organization of the Manhattan Project. Major Groves’ brain trust tried five
methods to accomplish the trick of separating U-235 from U-238, in a mass of metal which was all chemically pure uranium. Here’s one they never thought of …

  This year, incidentally, the layman is beginning to hear of the Probability Wave in connection with nuclear physics …

  Sometime in the mid-1950s (after reading a statement by Philip Van Doren Stern that said, “Never set pen to paper until you can state your theme in one single, simple declarative sentence”), Sturgeon began making a list entitled: IN ONE SENTENCE—What Sturgeon stories said. He only typed five entries, including one for this story, which says, “Artnan Process”: Any dictatorship is bad, even if beneficent.

  TS to Paul Williams, interview, December 6, 1975: The only really important story I wrote in that so-called entertainment period was “Microcosmic God.” It’s a story I have never liked … But that was a blockbuster. The other stories I wrote, they were fun, “The God in the Garden” and “Helix the Cat,” all these funny kind of humorous things, “Biddiver” and all that, were lightweight amusing stories and they hadn’t anything too heavy to say. What’s that one about the Martian, and these two guys are so—they fed the Martians Coca-Cola until they got drunk?

  Magazine blurb (contents page): THE ARTNANS HAD A MONOPOLY ON THE U-235 BECAUSE OF A REFINING PROCESS. BUT THEY WERE PERFECTLY WILLING TO LET ANYONE FIGURE IT OUT—IF HE COULD!

  “Biddiver”: first published in Astounding Science-Fiction, August 1941. Sturgeon’s “in one sentence—what Sturgeon stories said” for this one (circa 1954) was: In the weakest of us lives a friendly giant.

  The insurance fraud at the start of the story harkens back to TS’s first published story, “Heavy Insurance.”