Seekers of Tomorrow

by Sam Moskowitz

  His consuming ambition, now, was to become a performer with Barnum & Bailey's circus and make gymnastics his career. This seemed close to realization when Temple Uni-versity offered him a two-year athletic scholarship when he finished high school. Life now had a purpose. One morning, when he was 15, he woke up sick. He tried to get out of going to school but his stepfather would have none of it. Two days later, he was unable to rise from bed; his case was diagnosed as rheumatic fever. Before he recov-ered there was a 16 percent enlargement of the heart. That was the end of gymnastics, forever. His entire life came crashing down in ruin. He never was going to be a flyer for Barnum & Bailey. Now angry at the world, he began to give everyone trouble. He neglected his school subjects still further and began dressing in weird outfits just to be annoy-ing. To make things worse, his stepfather enforced seemingly harsh home conditions. Though they had a radio, the boys were not permitted to listen to it. Every evening, he and his brother were required to attend a one to one-and-one-half-hour reading in his father's library. The books, both fiction and nonfiction, covered an inspiring selection of subjects and the readings were sustained for many years. It was here that he first became acquainted with The Time Machine by H. G. Wells and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, but Ted had no appreciation of the literary back-ground he was getting. Exercising the prescribed right that the boys could ask any question they wished about what was read, Ted Sturgeon showed an unholy and recurring delight in innocently requesting the explanation of the word "orgy." The father demanded that the boys earn their own spending money. Yet when he caught Ted selling newspapers on a corner one block away from Drexel University where he taught languages, he quickly put a stop to it. Bemused, Ted went out and got a job collecting garbage in an apartment house and failed completely to understand his stepfather's explosion regarding that.

  When he finished high school he pleaded to be permitted to attend college, but his stepfather, suspecting that campus frivolity was Ted's motive, refused. This time Ted was sincere, but it did him no good. He settled instead for Penn State Nautical School, which had a two-year course to obtain a third mate's papers. A $100 high school graduation present from his grandmother took care of most of the $125 tuition fee. In nautical school he encountered discipline and hazing on a scale he had not dreamed of. He stuck it out until the end of the term, then, at the age of 17, quit and went to sea as an engine-room wiper. It was during his three years at sea that he began to write. He had thought of a "foolproof" way of cheating the Ameri-can Railway Express Agency, but lacked the immoral cour-age to test it himself. Instead, he cast the mischief in the form of a short-short story which he sold to McClure's Syndi-cate in 1937. McClure's paid five dollars for the story and it was published in dozens of newspapers throughout the United States. During the next two years he sold them forty short stories, none of which were fantasy and all of which were published under his own name. These were not intended as hack work; Sturgeon did his best in each of them.

  During this phase of his life he lived with an Italian shipmate who had set up an apartment in the Hell's Kitchen section of New York. These years were punctuated by stints at sea and it was while trying to find a ship out of a Texas port that Sturgeon made a deal with a small-town politician who owned a general store to write his campaign speeches for him. In payment, Sturgeon received day-old cup cakes, literally all that stood between him and starvation at the time. The politician won the election. Sturgeon did write one science-fiction story at this time, Helix the Cat, about a scien-tist and his cat, but the story was never sold and the manuscript has been misplaced.

  His decision to try to sell to the fantasy magazines came as the result of a friendship with a Brooklyn couple. The wife was a leading writer for "true confession" magazines. One day early in 1939, her husband slapped the first unknown down in front of Sturgeon and said: "This is the kind of thing you ought to try to write." Sturgeon was enchanted. This was not his first acquaintance with science fiction and fantasy. Though one of the taboos insisted upon by his stepfather was "No science fiction," since 1930 Sturgeon had intermittently read amazing stories, wonder stories, as-tounding stories, and weird tales. In the line of pure fantasy he had been deeply impressed by The Charwoman's Shadow by Lord Dunsany, Green Man-sions by W. H. Hudson, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll. Before he seriously began writing fiction, Sturgeon had composed a good amount of poetry and an occasional bit of verse, of very high quality, appears in his short stories. His idols, here, were William Blake and William Morris. One poem by Sturgeon, Look About You! which appeared illustrated in the January, 1940, unknown, is exceptional enough to warrant consideration in any substantial anthology of modern poems by American authors. But he abandoned most serious attempts at verse after he began to sell fiction commercially.

  With a copy of unknown before him, Sturgeon sat down and wrote a story minutely describing the feelings of a man about to be hit by a subway train. Editor John W. Campbell critically ripped the story apart on the ground that when the protagonist is the same at the end as he was at the beginning of the narrative, the result is not a story but an anecdote.

  Fortified with this erudite dictum, Sturgeon went home and wrote The God in the Garden, the first story he sold to Campbell. This success caused him to quit the sea and settle down to work as a professional writer. While trying to write more stories for Campbell he found himself persistently dis-tracted by a bizarre notion that kept creeping into his thoughts. Unable to continue with his regular work until he disposed of it, he interrupted the story he was working on and in four hours wrote Bianca's Hands, a horrifying tale of a man so enamored of the expressive hands of an idiot woman that he marries her to die in the ecstasy of having those superb hands choke the life from him. Sturgeon thrust the tale into the drawer with no immediate intention of selling it and continued with the story he was originally working on. With sales being made regularly to unknown and astound-ing science-fiction, Theodore Sturgeon decided to marry his school sweetheart, Dorothy Fillingame. Her parents vio-lently objected to Sturgeon's occupation and background, but, a week after the girl turned 21, parental objections were defied and they married. In ten consecutive hours of inspira-tion, on their honeymoon, Sturgeon wrote the nightmarish masterpiece that created his first reputation, It.

  He was now a fully accepted member of Campbell's "stable" of writers. As such he was sometimes given a chance at a special assignment. A crippled old man named James H. Beard had submitted several stories to Campbell which were strongly plotted but inadequately written. Beard's uncle was the Dan Beard who had founded the Boy Scouts of America, then 94 years old but still plying his profession as an illustra-tor. Old Dan Beard's claim to fame in the science-fiction world was a set of illustrations he had done for the best-selling interplanetary novel, A Journey in Other Worlds, by none other than John Jacob Astor, published in 1894. Camp-bell asked Sturgeon if he would take Beard's plots and make them into stories. These appeared as Hag Seleen, a superbly written story of a Cajun girl child who turns a witch's magic against her (unknown world, December, 1942) and The Bones, a fantasy about a machine that permits the viewer to experience the last events that happened to fragments of matter placed in it (unknown worlds, August 1943). Both stories were written before June, 1940.

  His wife pregnant, Sturgeon wrote steadily to support himself. Butyl and the Breather (astounding science-fic-tion, October, 1940) was a light-hearted farce, a sequel to The Ether Breather; Cargo (unknown, November, 1940) told of all the brownies, fairies, and various other "little people" shipping out of Europe during World War II; Shottle Bop (unknown, February, 1941) proved to be very popu-lar, a fantasy about the gnomelike owner of a shop who sold "bottles with things in them"; by this time Sturgeon was so prolific that Ultimate Egoist in the same issue appeared under the pen name of E. Hunter Waldo. While it made no special impact at the time of publication, Poker Face (astounding science-fiction, March, 1941) is historically importan
t as one of the earliest science-fiction stories based on the notion that otherworldly aliens are living and working among us and at any moment may open the lid on that third eye or pull their extra hands from beneath their waistcoats.

  Readers may not have grasped the significance of Poker face, but Microcosmic God in the April, 1941, astounding science-fiction had all the reaction of a bomb with a fast fuse. It was not that the idea was new; the concept of intelligent creatures in a microscopic world producing in-ventions at an accelerated rate relative to their own time span had been used in Out of the Sub Universe by R. F . Starzl (amazing stories quarterly, summer, 1928), had been defined in complete detail by Edmond Hamilton in Fessenden's World (weird tales, April, 1937), and had been recognized as a poignant classic in Calvin Peregoy's Short-Wave Castle (astounding stories, February, 1934)— but Sturgeon did it best. The modest fame as master of fantasy which Sturgeon had attained with It was far transcended by the acclaim brought to him by Microcosmic God. Far from being pleased, Sturgeon was first annoyed and then infuriated. The kindest thing he could say for Microcosmic God was that it was "fast paced." He deplored the fact that it did not have the "literary cadence" of many of his other less complimented works and he deeply resented the fact that readers didn't even seem to get the point: that a superman need not be a powerful, commanding person.

  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.

  The Sturgeon name increasingly became a focus for read-ership, but one remarkably well-done story, Nightmare Is-land, under the pseudonym E. Waldo Hunter in the June, 1941, astounding science-fiction, failed to achieve any special notice. Derived from a reference in a 1910 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, concerning the "tube worm," it dealt with a kingdom of worms in which a castaway alcoholic was worshipped as a god.

  Financial opportunity seemed to beckon in the form of an offer to run a luxury resort hotel in the British West Indies. This sounded like a heavenly way to make a living and seemed to provide a great deal more security than writing, so Sturgeon packed up his belongings, his wife, and his six-month-old baby girl, Patricia, and left the United States. He had barely settled himself comfortably in the hotel when Pearl Harbor was bombed and the United States entered the war. There went the tourist trade and the hotel job, so Sturgeon's wife took a secretarial job at Fort Symington and Sturgeon took to selling hosiery door to door. He finally got to run three mess halls and seventeen barracks buildings for the Army, then worked into operating a gas station and tractor lubrication center.

  The powerful tractors, bulldozers, and cranes fascinated him, so he learned to operate them. He accepted a job in Puerto Rico as a Class-A bulldozer and just loved it, moving his wife and child to that island.

  In 1944, with the European phase of the war drawing to a close, the base and the job folded and now there was a second child, Cynthia. He rented a house in St. Croix in the Virgin Islands and desperately tried to make ends meet. There had been no writing in two-and-one-half years. Camp-bell wasn't too helpful or encouraging, but spurred by neces-sity, Sturgeon applied himself and wrote Killdozer, a 37,-000-word novelette, in just nine days. That story, about a primeval electronic intelligence that takes over a bulldozer clearing an airfield on a Pacific island, embodied the vivid impressions of a sensitive artist of the power, sound, smell, and mortal danger of those mechanical behemoths.

  Campbell loved it and it became the cover story of the November, 1944, issue of astounding science-fiction. The check that Sturgeon received, $545, was the largest single amount he had ever earned for his writing.

  But the check didn't last long and Sturgeon went into a writing slump that he was unable to snap. He took advantage of a clause in his government contract which would pay for his plane fare back to the United States. He was to fly to a friend in Chicago, then go to New York, procure a literary agent, and make arrangements to get his family back to the States. The entire trip was to take but ten days. Things didn't work out. He couldn't find an agent. He was unable to write. The ten days stretched into eight months. During certain periods his main source of sustenance was the three meals a week he ate at the home of his half-sister.

  Finally a letter arrived from his wife. She wanted a di-vorce. For two months he couldn't make up his mind what to do, but finally a job he obtained as a copy editor for an advertising agency at $75 a week made it possible for him to raise enough money to return to St. Croix. He discussed the matter with his wife, but her confidence was shattered and they were divorced in a civil court in St. Thomas. In 1945 she married a mutual friend, retaining custody of the children.

  Sturgeon returned to New York in 1946, moving into the bachelor apartment of L. Jerome Stanton, then assistant editor of astounding science-fiction. As far as finances were concerned, Sturgeon was able to contribute little. He was in a daze for months. Campbell befriended him, inviting him as a house guest for periods as prolonged as two weeks at a stretch.

  Gradually, Campbell coaxed him out of his depression, until one day, in the basement of the editor's home, Sturgeon sat down at a typewriter and wrote the story The Chromium Helmet. Campbell read the first draft straight from the typewriter and accepted the story, which appeared in as-tounding science-fiction for June, 1946. More like a television script than science fiction, this novelette of a hair dryer that fished one's most wished-for desires from the subcon-scious and made them appear to have happened only superfi-cially disguised its artifices, yet it seemed to go over well with the readers. Mewhu's Jet, a long novelette which appeared later that year in the November astounding science-fiction, was a much better story. Engrossingly, and with a style as clear as crystal, Sturgeon told of the landing of an alien in a spaceship, the attempts to communicate with it, and the final wry realization that the outsider was a lost child with a super toy who didn't know where he came from, let alone the workings of his mechanism.

  During 1946, something else happened, Sturgeon had ped-dled dozens of products door to door in the past in an effort to make a living; now he decided to try his hand as a literary agent. In addition to handling his own efforts, he worked up a prominent group of clients, including A. Bertram Chandler, William Tenn, Judith Merril, Frederik Pohl, and Robert W. Lowndes. This profession lasted from January to December of 1946 and for years after that Sturgeon would not have an agent because "I wouldn't put my affairs in the hands of anyone in so much trouble."

  Agenting was the open sesame to a new world. Up to now, Sturgeon had but a single market: John W. Campbell's maga-zines. Now, he found his old rejects from unknown and astounding science-fiction welcome by editor Lamont Buchanan at weird tales. Within the next few years he would resurrect Cellmate, Deadly Ratio, The Professor's Ted-dy Bear, Abreaction, The Perfect Host, and The Martian and the Moron from the trunk and enjoy an enthusiastic recep-tion and a new reputation at weird tales. Thrilling wonder stories, which for years had followed a juvenile policy, went adult in 1947 and they took Stur-geon's The Sky Was Full of Ships, a tale of a warning of interplanetary invasion told from so unusual an angle as to earn it a place on television and radio.

  Through the years, Sturgeon had tried to sell the nightmar-ish Bianca's Hands, which he had written compulsively when he was 21. Agents, editors, friends were horrified by the concept. An editor told him he would never buy from an author whose mind could conceive notions like that. An agent told him he didn't want to be associated with an author whose bent carried him in such directions. Every magazine it was submitted to rejected it.

  Impelled by his recent good fortune in selling to new markets, Sturgeon mailed the story to the British argosy through which a prize of $1,000 was being
offered for the best short story submitted before a certain date.

  It won the prize—Graham Greene took second place—and was published in argosy for May, 1947. More than just money was involved here. The various ups and downs of his literary career had severely shaken Sturgeon's estimate of himself. One of the most accomplished stylists in the field, he still doubted whether he could actually write well enough to be a sustained success at writing. The bull's-eye scored by this story, written at a very early stage in his career, convinced him that he had always possessed the qualifications to be a good writer. His work immediately began to reflect his new confidence. Campbell had anticipated the advent of atomic power. Now he chronically egged on his writers to explore the ramifications of this discovery. Sturgeon was scarcely immune from this insistence, but his first story of atomic doom, Memorial (astounding science-fiction, April, 1946) was anything but memorable. Therefore, his second such story, Thunder and Roses, in the November, 1947, astounding science-fiction, routinely blurbed as an atomic energy story suggested noth-ing special. It wasn't until anthologist August Derleth picked it up for Strange Ports of Call in 1948 that it had a de-layed-action effect on the science-fiction world. Sturgeon had taken the tritest of themes in science fiction, a United States nearly destroyed by an enemy nuclear attack debating the ethics of striking back, because the explosion of its retaliatory weapons would raise the radiation level in the atmosphere to the point where every higher organism would be eradicated, thus eliminating any hope for another creature to rise to a state of civilization. Yet he pulled it off magnificently, even including a poem in the story which was set to music and which Sturgeon played on a guitar, accompany-ing Mary Mair, a lovely showgirl with a pleasant voice, who sang it at the Fifth World Science Fiction Convention in Philadelphia, August 31, 1947. Sturgeon was now ready for his first hard-cover anthology, Without Sorcery, published by Prime Press in 1948, with an introduction by Ray Bradbury. That author was already gathering steam, building toward his present considerable reputation. He wrote: "Perhaps the best way I can tell you what I think of a Theodore Sturgeon story is to explain with what diligent interest, in the year 1940, I split every Sturgeon tale down the middle and fetched out its innards to see what made it function. At that time I had not sold one story, I was 20, I was feverish for the vast secrets of successful writers. I looked upon Sturgeon with a secret and gnawing jealousy."