And Now the News

Theodore Sturgeon, in his office/workshop in Woodstock, New York. This picture, taken circa 1962, was for a glue advertisement in
Scientific American
. The rocket is the International Fantasy Award, received for
More Than Human
in 1954.

T
HEODORE
H
AMILTON
S
TURGEON
was born February 26, 1918, and died May 8, 1985. This is the ninth of a series of volumes that will collect all of his short fiction of all types and all lengths shorter than a novel. The volumes and the stories within the volumes are organized chronologically by order of composition (insofar as it can be determined). This ninth volume contains stories written in 1955, 1956, and 1957. Five have never before appeared in a Sturgeon collection.

Preparation of each of these volumes would not be possible without the hard work and invaluable participation of Noël Sturgeon, Debbie Notkin, and our publishers, Lindy Hough and Richard Grossinger. I would also like to thank, for their significant assistance with this volume, David G. Hartwell, the Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust, Kim Charnovsky, Robin Sturgeon, Marion Sturgeon, Jayne Williams, Ralph Vicinanza, Paula Morrison, Dixon Chandler, Cindy Lee Berryhill, T. V. Reed, and all of you who have expressed your interest and support.

By David G. Hartwell

I became a dedicated reader and collector of science fiction and fantasy, and supernatural horror fiction, in the 1950s. At the end of the decade in 1959 I went to college and won a book collection prize there, with only a hundred hardcovers. Among the ornaments of that collection were the Sturgeon books, including first editions of
Without Sorcery
, his first book, and
More Than Human
, his most ambitious novel. Part of winning the prize involved explaining something of the significance of the books.

Four decades later, I do not recall what I wrote then, but I do know that I had been introduced to Sturgeon's short fiction in the sixth grade and looked forward to everything by him from then on. And still vivid in my memory is the Saturday afternoon in late 1953 or early 1954 when I walked into a news store in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, where I had bought a few SF magazines before, and was pointed to the paperback rack by the proprietor. There I found and bought my first two SF paperbacks, Sturgeon's
More than Human
and Arthur C. Clarke's
Childhood's End
. That was the first year I bought and owned books, and these were treasures. I read them with intense concentration and delight. Nearly ten years later, after studying William Faulkner's novels, I re-read
More Than Human
and liked it and admired it even more.

Somehow very early in my reading I came to think of Sturgeon as the best writer of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. I would read anything he published, follow him beyond my normal comfort zones because of the rewards of reading his stories, not something I would do for many writers (such was my loyalty to SF at the time). I also recall my delight when he became a book reviewer for
Venture SF
in
the late 50s and published his famous column explaining Sturgeon's Law for the general readership; it had first been revealed in a 1953 Philcon speech later reprinted in a fanzine. He was one of Ray Bradbury's mentors (and Bradbury was at his peak then, publishing knockout stories and books). He was admired by Damon Knight, my favorite reviewer. Other writers and editors mentioned him in reverent tones in print. I thought he was a great writer. I still do.

As the years passed, I began to attend SF conventions, read fanzines, and hear gossip about Sturgeon, mainly about his writing blocks, his nudism, and his love life. He was famous for all three. I finally met him for the first time in 1972 at the Clarion writing workshop in East Lansing, Michigan, where he borrowed $200.00 through me to make a payment that was pressing. Fred Pohl laughed at me the next week and said I would never get it back, but it was repaid shortly thereafter. I was so pleased that I would gladly have given up the money to know Sturgeon. At Clarion I was privileged to listen to his Monday morning lecture to the writing students, which was full of sophisticated and useful advice and ideas, so full that I could tell that the students were not getting much from it. But I still remember a lot of it and use it in my own teaching. There exist tapes of Sturgeon teaching a writer's workshop late in his life that may someday become commercially available. And I arranged to interview Sturgeon at the 1972 World SF Convention in Los Angeles a month or so later for
Crawdaddy
magazine, in which I then had a science fiction column. It's a long interview filled with lots of Sturgeon's personal ideas and perceptions of books, stories about his life and friends, interesting stuff that I recommend to all interested parties.