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THEODORE STURGEON
MORE: http://www.physics.emory.edu/~weeks/misc/sturgeon.html
Theodore Sturgeon (born Edward Hamilton Waldo; 26 February 1918 — 8 May 1985) was an American science fiction author.
He was known to use a technique known as "rhythmic prose", in which his prose text would drop into a standard poetic meter. This has the effect of creating a subtle shift in mood, usually without alerting the reader to its cause.
Sturgeon was born in Staten Island, New York in 1918. Eleven years later, after a divorce, his mother married the Scotman William Dicky ("Argylle") Sturgeon. Young Edward changed his name to Theodore, the better to match his childhood nickname, "Teddy", and to distinguish himself from his birth father, also named Edward.[1] Although "Theodore Sturgeon" is frequently misidentified as a pseudonym, it was in fact his legal name since the age of eight.[2]
He sold his first story in 1938 to the newspaper McClure's Syndicate, which bought much of his early (non-fantastic) work; his first genre appearance was "Ether Breather" in Astounding Science Fiction a year later. At first he wrote mainly short stories, primarily for genre magazines such as Astounding and Unknown, but also for general-interest publications such as Argosy Magazine. He used the pen name "E. Waldo Hunter" when two of his stories ran in the same issue of Astounding. A few of his early stories were signed "Theodore H. Sturgeon."
Sturgeon ghost-wrote an Ellery Queen mystery novel, The Player on the Other Side (Random House, 1963). This novel gained critical praise from critic H.R.F. Keating, who "had almost finished writing Crime and Mystery: the 100 Best Books, in which I had included The Player on the Other Side ... placing the book squarely in the Queen canon"[3] when he learned that it had been written by Sturgeon. Similarly, "William DeAndrea, author and ... winner of Mystery Writers of America awards, selecting his ten favorite mystery novels for the magazine Armchair Detective, picked The Player on the Other Side as one of them. He said: 'This book changed my life ... and made a raving mystery fan (and therefore ultimately a mystery writer) out of me. ... The book must be 'one of the most skilful pastiches in the history of literature. An amazing piece of work, whomever did it'."[3]
Sturgeon wrote the screenplays for the Star Trek episodes "Shore Leave" (1966) and "Amok Time" (1967, later published as a "Fotonovel" in 1978). The latter is known for his invention of the pon farr, the Vulcan mating ritual, the first use of the sentence "Live long and prosper" and the first use of the Vulcan hand symbol. Sturgeon also wrote several episodes of Star Trek that were never produced. One of these was notable for having first introduced the Prime Directive. He also wrote an episode of the Saturday morning show Land of the Lost, "The Pylon Express", in 1975. Two of Sturgeon's stories were adapted for The New Twilight Zone. One, "A Saucer of Loneliness", was broadcast in 1986 and was dedicated to his memory. Another short story, "Yesterday was Monday", was the inspiration for the The New Twilight Zone episode A Matter of Minutes. His 1944 novella "KillDozer" was the inspiration for the 1970s made-for-TV movie, Marvel comic book, and alternative rock band of the same name.
Theodore Sturgeon is one of my favorite short story writers; his elegiac, polished prose is full of human feeling and deep insights, it's emotional and thrilling at the same time. I can not emphasize enough the importance of keeping Sturgeon's work in print - he is truly one the finer standards in sf writing, the ideal to aspire to (excellent characterization, crisp plot lines and always a bit of poetic reflection, invariably affecting the heart)
Theodore Sturgeon was born Edward Hamilton Waldo in New York City. He later adopted his stepfather's surname and took on a new first name. While still a teenager he went to sea for three years. He began publishing sf in 1939 but stopped producing it after a few years and went abroad. He began writing again in 1946 and, in the next fifteen years, produced almost all of the work for which he is famous. He is one of sf's great short story writers and his acclaimed novels include More than Human, the winner of the International Fantasy Award for 1954, The Cosmic Rape and Venus Plus X.
MORE: http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/s/theodore-sturgeon/
From the back
cover of the trade edition:
There's Lone, the simpleton who can hear other people's thoughts and make a man
blow his brains out just by looking at him. There's Janie, who moves things
without touching them, and there are the teleporting twins, who can travel ten
feet or ten miles. There's Baby, who invented an antigravity engine while still
in the cradle, and Gerry, who has everything it takes to run the world except
for a conscience. Separately, they are talented freaks. Together they compose a
single organism that may represent the next step in evolution, and the final
chapter in the history of the human race.
MORE: http://www.denversfbookclub.com/sturgeon.htm
THEODORE STURGEON authored numerous science fiction and
fantasy novels and short stories, among them, *More Than Human*, recipient of
the International Fantasy Award, and "Slow Sculpture," winner of Hugo
and Nebula Awards. Shortly after his death, he was given the Life Achievement
Award at the World Fantasy Awards. He was born in
THEODORE STURGEON wrote two of the seventy-nine episodes of The Original STAR TREK TV series:
"Shore Leave" [#17 from 1966 First Season] Alice In Wonderland is a character on a fantasy planet where the crew vacations.
"Amok Time" [#34 from 1967 Second Season] Spock goes through the Vulcan mating cycle, "pon farr" as he must return to his home planet Vulcan and *mate, or die*. This episode that opened the second season shows Spock in an orgasmic eyeball roll as he goes deep into "Plak-tow", the *Blood Fever*. This episode has the first time we hear the motto "Live Long and Prosper" and the first time we see the Nimoy-invented Vulcan greeting (palm forward with fingers spread in a *V* between the middle and ring fingers).
STURGEON'S LAW: "Ninety percent of everything is crap." It is derived from a quote by science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, who once said, "Sure, ninety percent of science fiction is crud. That's because ninety percent of everything is crud." When Sturgeon's Law is cited, the final word is usually changed to "crap".
MORE: http://www.tedalvy.com/ts.htm
The Man Who Lost the Sea
By Theodore Sturgeon
13 April 2009
Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1959
Say you're a kid, and one dark night you're running along the cold sand with this helicopter in your hand, saying very fast witchy-witchy-witchy. You pass the sick man and he wants you to shove off with that thing. Maybe he thinks you're too old to play with toys. So you squat next to him in the sand and tell him it isn't a toy, it's a model. You tell him look here, here's something most people don't know about helicopters. You take a blade of the rotor in your fingers and show him how it can move in the hub, up and down a little, back and forth a little, and twist a little, to change pitch. You start to tell him how this flexibility does away with the gyroscopic effect, but he won't listen. He doesn't want to think about flying, about helicopters, or about you, and he most especially does not want explanations about anything by anybody. Not now. Now, he wants to think about the sea. So you go away.
The sick man is buried in the cold sand with only his head and his left arm showing. He is dressed in a pressure suit and looks like a man from Mars. Built into his left sleeve is a combination time-piece and pressure gauge, the gauge with a luminous blue indicator which makes no sense, the clock hands luminous red. He can hear the pounding of surf and the soft swift pulse of his pumps. One time long ago when he was swimming he went too deep and stayed down too long and came up too fast, and when he came to it was like this: they said, "Don't move, boy. You've got the bends. Don't even try to move." He had tried anyway. It hurt. So now, this time, he lies in the sand without moving, without trying.
His head isn't working right. But he knows clearly that it isn't working right, which is a strange thing that happens to people in shock sometimes. Say you were that kid, you could say how it was, because once you woke up lying in the gym office in high school and asked what had happened. They explained how you tried something on the parallel bars and fell on your head. You understood exactly, though you couldn't remember falling. Then a minute later you asked again what had happened and they told you. You understood it. And a minute later . . . forty-one times they told you, and you understood. It was just that no matter how many times they pushed it into your head, it wouldn't stick there; but all the while you knew that your head would start working again in time. And in time it did. . . . Of course, if you were that kid, always explaining things to people and to yourself, you wouldn't want to bother the sick man with it now.
MORE: http://www.strangehorizons.com/2009/20090413/lostsea-f.shtml
Theodore Sturgeon
"I am not a writer ... a writer is
someone who has to write. The only reason
I write is because it's the only way I can justify all the other things I didn't
do."
And he wanted to do everything, try everything, and learn about everything. In the end, Ted had gone thru a lot of it. He became a Science Fiction writer beginning with a few tentative stories in his late teens and then hit the floor running in 1939 as one of John Campbell's favorite writers and soon expanded into a nationally known author.
Using all story lengths, Sturgeon was as good in one as in another: short stories "Graveyard Reader" and "A Touch of Strange;" novelettes "It" and "The Martian and the Moron;" novellas "The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff" (shades of the Kuttners) and "...And My Fear is Great;" novels Venus Plus X and More Than Human; with numerous volumes of collections and, currently, having all works in print.
Sturgeon, like his peers, wrote historical, mystery, and western novels. He adapted his short stories to television scripts, including several for Star Trek where he is credited with being creator of the Prime Directive (non-interference with other cultures). Writing numerous articles, Ted was also a columnist for National Review magazine.
MORE: http://www.gcwillick.com/Spacelight/sturgeon.html
KILLDOZER
STAR TREK SHORE LEAVE (1966)
STAR TREK AMOK TIME (1967)
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