Selections

by Theodore Sturgeon

  As for those silences. Something sank Sturgeon. His amazing early success, his popularity with fans and stardom at conventions -- they told against the writer. Success is a vampire. In the midst of life we are in definite trouble. They say Sturgeon was the first author in the field ever to sign a six-book contract. A six-book contract was a rare mark of distinction, like being crucified. A mark of extinction. Ted was no stakhanovite and the deal did for him; he was reduced to writing a novelization of a schlock TV series, "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea," to fulfill his norms.

  At one time, he was reduced further to writing TV pilot scripts for Hollywood. He lived in motels or trailers, between marriages, between lives. Those who read "The Dreaming Jewels" or "Venus Plus X" or the story collections forget that writing is secretly a heavy load, an endless battle against the disappointments which come from within as well as without -- and reputation a heavier load. Ted was fighting his way back to the light when night came on.

  About Ted's dark side.

  Well, he wrote that memorable novel, "Some of Your Blood," about this crazy psychotic who goes for drinking menstrual discharge. Actually, it does not taste as bad as Ted made out. That was his bid to escape the inescapable adulation.

  One small human thing he did. He and I, with James Gunn, were conducting the writers' workshop at the Conference of the Fantastic at Boca Raton, Florida. This was perhaps three years ago.

  Our would-be writers circulated their effusions around the table for everyone's comment. One would-be was a plump, pallid, unhappy lady. Her story was a fantasy about a guy who tried three times to commit suicide, only to be blocked each time by a green monster from Hell who wanted him to keep on suffering. Sounds promising, but the treatment was hopeless.

  Dumb comments around the table. I grew impatient with their unreality. When the story reached me, I asked the lady right out, "Have you ever tried to commit suicide?"

  Unexpected response. She stared at me in shock. Then she burst into a hailstorm of tears, collapsing onto the table... "Three times," she cried. Everyone looked fit to faint.

  "It's nothing to be ashamed of," I said. "I've tried it too."

  "So have I," said Sturgeon calmly.

  He needn't have come in like that. He just did it bravely, unostentatiously, to support me, to support her, to support everyone. And I would guess there was a lot of misery and disappointment in Ted's life, for all the affection he generated. Yet he remained kind, loving, giving. (The lady is improving by the way. We're still in touch. That's another story.)

  If that does not strike you as a positive story, I'm sorry. I'm not knocking suicide, either. Everyone should try it at least once.

  Ted was a real guy, not an idol, an effigy, as some try to paint him. He was brilliant, so he suffered. I know beyond doubt that he would be pleased to see me set down some of the bad times he had. He was not one to edit things out. Otherwise he would have been a less powerful writer.

  There are troves of lovely Sturgeon tales (as in the collection labeled "E Pluribus Unicorn"), like "Bianca's Hands," which a new generation would delight in. He wrote well, if sometimes over-lushly. In many ways, Ted was the direct opposite of the big technophile names of his generation, Doc Smith, Poul Anderson, Robert Heinlein, et al. His gaze was more closely fixed on people. For that we honor him, and still honor him. Good for him that he never ended up in that prick's junkyard where they pay you a million dollars advance for some crud that no sane man wants to read.

  Ted died early in May in Oregon, of pneumonia and other complications. Now he consorts with Sophocles, Dick, and the author of the Kama Sutra. He had returned from a holiday in Hawaii, taken in the hopes he might recover his health there. That holiday, incidentally, was paid for by another SF writer -- one who often gets publicity for the wrong things. Thank God, there are still some good guys left. We are also duly grateful for the one just departed.

  JACQUELINE LICHTENBERG

  The first short story of Ted Sturgeon's that engraved his byline on my mind was titled "Bianca's Hands."

  That short story contained a penetrating image that, for me, defined both the genre of horror and the reasons why people are so fascinated by this genre. The image was of detached hands chasing the protagonist around her house. It gave me nightmares.

  It also defined for me why I don't like horror, but that's another story. Having taken notice of Theodore Sturgeon's writing, I studied it, because even then I wanted to be a professional science fiction writer. And so I came to understand how Ted handled various themes, most particularly alien reproduction.

  In the course of this, I ran across some interview or article, I forget now, where Ted's concept of the Q with the arrow through it, which represents his own personal, primary philosophical stance on how to live the best possible life, was explained in some detail. In brief, it is simply, "Ask The Next Question". That's harder than it sounds, for it requires that you be able to penetrate the walls that your cultural conditioning builds inside your mind, compartmentalizing it.

  Formulating the next question is very hard. It means you must never stop thinking, never take things at face value, never accept the illusion that you really understand everything about a subject, never accept any theory as final.

  The Q with the Arrow means "Life is Process" -- a dynamic, ongoing, never-ending search over the rainbow, beyond morning, into the Unknown. It is an attitude which is almost exactly like Gene Roddenberry's "Infinite Diversity In Infinite Combinations" -- and Gene's idea that "When We Are Wise" we won't be xenophobic. Ted and Gene had a lot in common, not least of which was a deep, inner, gentleness of being.

  Many many years after reading "Bianca's Hands," when I had become a devoted fan of the first Star Trek Series, I read in The Making of Star Trek that the upcoming season of the show would include a story about Spock's mating drive and that it had been written by Theodore Sturgeon. I spent the ensuing weeks imagining what that script would include. I had it in my mind, long before seeing it (or hearing rumors on the ST grapevine on what it would include) a sequence of scenes that had to be there, the basic premise of the Vulcan mating drive, and long sequences of dialogue. I knew that script word-for-word before I ever saw the show.

  The most stunning thing about this was that, when I saw the show in first broadcast -- I was proved correct in every surmise. Knowing Ted's writing, I knew exactly what he'd do with the Trek premise.

  For me, this validated my ambition to become a professional in this genre. I can do this kind of work. It was a very gratifying experience. "Amok Time" became my all-time favorite Trek episode.

  But that's not all.

  Years and years after that, at a Star Trek Convention in Great Gorge, New Jersey, I met Theodore Sturgeon for the first time.

  I went into the room for my first panel, and he was the speaker on stage right before my panel. I sat in the audience, enthralled. And I asked a question which, today, I don't even recall. It started an audience discussion and I suppose brought me to his attention.

  Later, I saw him sitting alone in the bar, and I went over to introduce myself. At that point, I was already well known as the primary author of the Bantam paperback, Star Trek Lives! I can't now recall if this was before or after I became the Chairman of the Science Fiction Writers of America Speaker's Bureau.

  He taught me to drink Compari properly (no water, one ice cube) as he was famous for doing with all his acquaintances, and we talked for 3 hours or more, until one of us had another panel to do. During the course of this discussion, he personally explained the silver Q with an arrow through it that he always wore around his neck. I had forgotten all about it. I learned it the second time, in depth and detail during that weekend, and recognized in it one of the core elements in my own personal philosophy.

  Later that weekend, we were assigned to the same autographing table, and between customers, we sat and talked and talked -- and I finally got up nerve to tell him he was the author of the one story in all SF/F that I really HATED
("Bianca's Hands") and the one story in all televised SF that I thought was the best thing ever written in SF/F -- "Amok Time" -- and I told him how I had anticipated every element in it, scene for scene and word for word, based only on knowing he was the author and that it was television. As Trek aficionados know, the script Ted turned in is quite different from what was broadcast, and what I constructed in my mind at the time was the broadcast version.

  At any rate, this started another marathon talkathon between us.

  Years and years after that, at a World Science Fiction Convention in San Francisco, I ran across Ted with his wife Jane, and they invited me out to dinner. We got to talking about the Occult, and one thing led to another, and I admitted I was running the Tarot Workshop at the Worldcon. so we talked Tarot. Turned out Ted's wife Jane reads cards too, and during this discussion, she read for me. Afterwards, she was rather surprised at herself for it was the first time she'd ever eaten an entire meal in trance. She could barely remember what she'd eaten. And the reading was exceptionally good.

  When Ted, May He Rest In Peace, left this world, I grieved seriously.

  JAMES GUNN

  James Gunn is an American novelist, short story writer, editor, non-fiction writer, dramatist and scriptwiter who writes in the science fiction genre. His novel The Immortal(1962) was made into a television series; other works include Alternate Worlds(1975), an illustrated history of science fiction, and Isaac Asimov: Foundations of Science Fiction(1982). His 1986 Star Trek novel, The Joy Machine is dedicated to and based on an idea by Sturgeon; it includes a bibliography and reminiscence. Gunn, who had known Sturgeon since the early 1950s, conducted seminars in science fiction at the University of Kansas: Sturgeon was a regular instructor at these seminars. In the following except from Gunn's article in Fantasy Review Vol 8, No 5, May 1985, page 7, he shares some of his personal memories of Sturgeon.

  Every member of the science-fiction community is irreplaceable, but some are more irreplaceable than others. We will never replace Theodore Sturgeon. He was unique.

  I did not know Ted as well as others had known him, who met him as a young man in New York in the early days of his self-discovery as a writer. My first contact with him was the result of a telephone call from Horace Gold. Horace said he would buy my short novel Breaking Point if I would let Ted cut it by a third. I had such admiration for the author of most [of] the stories I liked best in Astounding and later in Galaxy that I agreed without hesitation. Then, when I visited New York in November 1952, having decided to return to freelance writing after learning about the sale of four stories, I visited Ted in an unusual house built by a retired sea captain on a hill overlooking the Hudson. He drew me in to the circle of people he thought mattered, and he showed me Ted Sturgeon: personal magnetism, an interest in others, an intense involvement with words and writing, and a generous admiration for the accomplishments of others.

  Later I met him occasionally at science-fiction conventions, most notably in Philadelphia in 1953, when I heard him announce Sturgeon's Law (ninety percent of everything is crud) and sing Strange Fruit. But I got to know him best in his later years, when he was not doing much writing any more, when he answered my appeal to help with the Intensive English Institute on the Teaching of Science Fiction - my decade-long effort to teach the teachers of science fiction.

  Ted arrived for the second Institute (as did Fred Pohl); only Gordon Dickson had a longer tenure, and Ted came last year when Gordon could not come. Last year Ted was watching his health, wearing a monitor on his wrist to check his pulse and having some difficulty with hills, and that was frightening, because Ted had seemed always so wiry and inexhaustible that we all thought he would go on forever.

  Ted would arrive and immediately begin to charm everyone around him. Ted cared about people, anybody, and everybody. One student enrolled in the Institute only because Ted would be there, and within hours she had poured out to him to him the intimate tragedies of her life. Ted was like that; he didn't so much invite intimacy as draw it into him with every breath, the breath that must have become so difficult for him at the end. People wanted to do things for Ted, just as he was willing to do anything for them. They would meet him at the airport, write to him, seek him out. One fan came to the Institute just to sit with his wife's young child (and later returned to participate in the Institute). Another, when his wife (whom he always called "Lady Jayne") could not afford to come took up a collection to fly her to the Institute as a surprise.

  Ted loved to come to Lawrence. So did Jayne. They told me so often and were willing to do anything they could to help the Institute, to keep it going. I always wondered whether he loved to go anywhere he could find people to talk to, people to bring into his magic circle, but it may have been the special kind of people who came to the Institute that drew him. They were involved people, teachers most of them, and special teachers at that, because they were willing to experiment, and Ted knew that through teachers he could influence thousands of young minds.

  He wanted the teachers to understand what he thought was important. That was writing. He wanted them to love words, the way he did. He wanted them to love the right words and the right way to put them together, and he wanted them to pass the loves of his life along to their students. One evening he would talk almost entirely about his discovery of what he called "metric prose", the author's conscious choice of a particular poetic foot for passages in which the author wanted to achieve special effects. But he always insisted (I can hear him now in his intense, musical voice) that the reader must never become conscious of the technique or the game is lost.

  He would spend another evening discussing style and reading a particular favorite or two among his own work. But he would spend most of the time reading the English translation of a French author who told the same ridiculous story in dozens of different styles. Ted chortling over each discovery, as if he were enjoying it for the first time, and then leafing further into the slender volume to come upon another. Once he forgot the book and wrote some examples of his own; they were far more interesting because he was a far better writer, but I never could convince him of that. He liked his French author because it showed that somebody else had discovered, before he had thought of it, a beautiful way to reveal the power of words and style.

  Ted loved finding new writers or admiring the work of older writers. He fell in love with them and his love overflowed into the reviews he wrote for The New York Times and other journals. He may not have been the best critic in the field, because he hated to give a work a bad review, but he was the best-loved critic. Dozens of important authors will never forget the encouragement he gave them.

  Ted also wanted people to live, which meant to not be afraid to enjoy life and to be eternally curious, as he was. Fred Pohl says that every novel is about "how to be more like me." That certainly was true of Ted's stories, which had more of himself in them than might be said about the work of any other author I know, but it was also true of his life. In that too, he said "how to be more like me." Each summer we would ask our guest writers to give a public lecture, and Ted would tell the audience to "ask the next question," for which a fan had made up a symbol for him as a medallion he wore around his neck: a "Q" with an arrow horizontally through it. And he would always end with the statement that "you must never stop asking the next question, because if you do that, you're dead." I hope Ted, wherever his questing intelligence has come to rest, is still asking the next question.

  If there is a great deal in this reminiscence about love, it is for a good reason. Ted loved life, loved people, and loved writing. He particularly loved outsiders, the unfortunate, the despised, the downtrodden. The superhuman gestalt in More Than Human was made up of outcasts, the refuse of traditional society. For good reason. Most of his fiction involved those kind of characters because they were his special people.

  He believed that we should love everybody, but particularly the unloved and those who placed themselves beyond scorn or beneath contempt, often by
their practices or appetites. His favorite title among his own works was "If All Men Where Brothers Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?"

  One of the insights that came to me in the early days of the Institute was that many science-fiction authors (maybe all of them) can be differentiated by what they think is the single change that will solve the world's problems: "everything would be wonderful, if only..." Isaac Asimov might complete it "... people behaved rationally"; Robert Heinlein "...the incompetent people let the competent people solve the problems"; A E van Vogt, "...people could use their hidden powers." For Ted it had to be "...people loved each other."

  If there is an afterlife, Ted now must be afloat in a sea of love. If there isn't, he left much behind, both in people whose life he touched and the books and stories that distilled his message into fiction that continues to ask the next question.

  ARTICLES ON THEODORE STURGEON

  THE FIRST MOON LANDING

  Wina Golden, Theodore Sturgeon’s wife, recounts for ABC News, her husband’s reaction to the first Moon landing, July 20, 1969. Wina Golden is a well-known journalist for a variety of publications, including the NY Times and worked for many years as a journalist for all the major networks of the time.

  The missing "a" has been a news story for weeks. After 37 years, Neil Armstrong's alleged first words on the moon are now deciphered by modern technology as grammatically correct; he did say "One small step for a man..." But that was not the first thing I remember him saying.

  I remember that day, those moments, as if they were burned into my heart and my brain. I remember that the first words of the first human on the moon were, "It's some kind of dust. I can kick it with my toe."