A Saucer of Loneliness
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Authors: Theodore Sturgeon
Theodore Sturgeon with his children Robin, Tandy, and Noël on Grenada Island, West Indies 1958.
Copyright © 2000 the Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust. Previously published materials copyright © 1953, 1954 by Theodore Sturgeon and the Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without written permission of the publisher.
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North Atlantic Books
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Berkeley, California 94712
Cover art by Ed Emshwiller
A Saucer of Loneliness
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eISBN: 978-1-58394-751-7
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Sturgeon, Theodore.
A saucer of loneliness / Theodore Sturgeon: edited by Paul Williams
p. cm. — (The complete stories of Theodore Sturgeon ; v. 7)
Contents: A saucer of loneliness — The touch of your hand — The world well lost — And my fear is great — The wages of synergy — The dark room — Talent — A way of thinking — The silken swift — The clinic — Mr. Costello, hero — The education of Drusilla Strange.
1. Science fiction, American. I. Williams, Paul, 1948– II. Title. III. Series: Sturgeon, Theodore. Short stories: v. 7.
GV1149.5.C6 C54 2000
PS3569.T875 A6 2000
813′.54—dc21 00-042356
v3.1
T
HEODORE
H
AMILTON
S
TURGEON
was born February 26, 1918, and died May 8, 1985. This is the seventh 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 seventh volume contains stories written between autumn 1952 and autumn 1953.
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, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Carol Emshwiller, the Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust, Marion Sturgeon, Jayne Williams, Ralph Vicinanza, Nicole George, Paula Morrison, Catherine Campaigne, Jennifer Privateer, Eric Weeks, Robin Sturgeon, Kim Charnovsky, T. V. Reed, and all of you who have expressed your interest and support.
Without Sorcery
(1948)
The Dreaming Jewels
[aka
The Synthetic Man
] (1950)
More Than Human
(1953)
E Pluribus Unicorn
(1953)
Caviar
(1955)
A Way Home
(1955)
The King and Four Queens
(1956)
I, Libertine
(1956)
A Touch of Strange
(1958)
The Cosmic Rape
[aka
To Marry Medusa
] (1958)
Aliens 4
(1959)
Venus Plus X
(1960)
Beyond
(1960)
Some of Your Blood
(1961)
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
(1961)
The Player on the Other Side
(1963)
Sturgeon in Orbit
(1964)
Starshine
(1966)
The Rare Breed
(1966)
Sturgeon Is Alive and Well …
(1971)
The Worlds of Theodore Sturgeon
(1972)
Sturgeon’s West
(with Don Ward) (1973)
Case and the Dreamer
(1974)
Visions and Venturers
(1978)
Maturity
(1979)
The Stars Are the Styx
(1979)
The Golden Helix
(1979)
Alien Cargo
(1984)
Godbody
(1986)
A Touch of Sturgeon
(1987)
The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff
(1989)
Argyll
(1993)
Star Trek, The Joy Machine
(with James Gunn) (1996)
1.
The Ultimate Egoist
(1994)
2.
Microcosmic God
(1995)
3.
Killdozer!
(1996)
4.
Thunder and Roses
(1997)
5.
The Perfect Host
(1998)
6.
Baby Is Three
(1999)
7.
A Saucer of Loneliness
(2000)
8.
Bright Segment
(2002)
9.
And Now the News …
(2003)
10.
The Man Who Lost the Sea
(2005)
11.
The Nail and the Oracle
(2007)
12.
Slow Sculpture
(2009)
13.
Case and the Dreamer
(2010)
Foreword by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The Education of Drusilla Strange
I
CREATED A CHARACTER
, Kilgore Trout, an impoverished, uncelebrated science fiction writer, who made his debut in 1965 in my novel
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
. Trout would subsequently make cameo appearances in several more of my books, and in 1973 would star in
Breakfast of Champions
.
Persons alert for wordplay noticed that Trout and Theodore Sturgeon were both named for fish, and that their first names ended with “ore.” They asked me if my friend Ted had been my model for Kilgore.
Answer: Very briefly, and in a way. Kilgore, like Ted when we first met in 1958, was a victim of a hate crime then commonly practiced by the American literary establishment. It wasn’t racism or sexism or ageism. It was “genreism.” Definition: “The unexamined conviction that anyone who wrote science fiction wasn’t really a writer, but rather a geek of some sort.” A genuine geek, of course, is a carnival employee who is displayed in a filthy cage and billed as “The Wild Man from Borneo.”
Genreism was still rampant in late autumn, 1958, when I was living in Barnstable, Mass., on Cape Cod, and Ted and his wife Marion had just rented a house near the water in Truro (also on the Cape), no place to be when winter came. We knew each other’s work, but had never met. Bingo! There we were face-to-face at last, at suppertime in my living room.
Ted had been writing nonstop for days or maybe weeks. He was skinny and haggard, underpaid and unappreciated outside the ghetto science fiction was then. He announced that he was going to do a standing back flip, which he did. He landed on his knees with a crash which shook the whole house. When he got back on his feet, humiliated and laughing in agony, one of the best writers in America was indeed, but only for a moment, my model for Kilgore Trout.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
New York, New York
November 1999
I
F SHE
’
S DEAD
, I
THOUGHT
, I’ll never find her in this white flood of moonlight on the white sea, with the surf seething in and over the pale, pale sand like a great shampoo. Almost always, suicides who stab themselves or shoot themselves in the heart carefully bare their chests; the same strange impulse generally makes the sea-suicide go naked.
A little earlier, I thought, or later, and there would be shadows for the dunes and the breathing toss of the foam. Now the only real shadow was mine, a tiny thing just under me, but black enough to feed the blackness of the shadow of a blimp.
A little earlier, I thought, and I might have seen her plodding up the silver shore, seeking a place lonely enough to die in. A little later and my legs would rebel against this shuffling trot through sand, the maddening sand that could not hold and would not help a hurrying man.
My legs did give way then and I knelt suddenly, sobbing—not for her; not yet—just for air. There was such a rush about me: wind, and tangled spray, and colors upon colors and shades of colors that were not colors at all but shifts of white and silver. If light like that were sound, it would sound like the sea on sand, and if my ears were eyes, they would see such a light.
I crouched there, gasping in the swirl of it, and a flood struck me, shallow and swift, turning up and outward like flower petals where it touched my knees, then soaking me to the waist in its bubble and crash. I pressed my knuckles to my eyes so they would open again. The sea was on my lips with the taste of tears and the whole white night shouted and wept aloud.
And there she was.
Her white shoulders were a taller curve in the sloping foam. She must have sensed me—perhaps I yelled—for she turned and saw me kneeling there. She put her fists to her temples and her face twisted, and she uttered a piercing wail of despair and fury, and then plunged seaward and sank.
I kicked off my shoes and ran into the breakers, shouting, hunting, grasping at flashes of white that turned to sea-salt and coldness in my fingers. I plunged right past her, and her body struck my side as a wave whipped my face and tumbled both of us. I gasped in solid water, opened my eyes beneath the surface and saw a greenish-white distorted moon hurtle as I spun. Then there was sucking sand under my feet again and my left hand was tangled in her hair.
The receding wave towed her away and for a moment she streamed out from my hand like steam from a whistle. In that moment I was sure she was dead, but as she settled to the sand, she fought and scrambled to her feet.
She hit my ear, wet, hard, and a huge, pointed pain lanced into my head. She pulled, she lunged away from me, and all the while my hand was caught in her hair. I couldn’t have freed her if I had wanted to. She spun to me with the next wave, battered and clawed at me, and we went into deeper water.