A Saucer of Loneliness (53 page)

TS built another story around this same idea: “The Skills of Xanadu” (1956). In a 1957 letter to a book editor describing stories available for a new collection, Sturgeon wrote:
THE TOUCH OF YOUR HAND and THE SKILLS OF XANADU will be seen by the discerning eye to be the same story. A third, now in preparation for
Astounding [and apparently never completed]
, says the same thing again. This results from a deep conviction that the basic statement of these stories needs to be made
.

Sturgeon’s introduction to “The Touch of Your Hand” in his 1984 collection
Alien Cargo
:
This is from the fertile postwar period, when I was writing the likes of
More Than Human.
It’s about love and authoritarianism, as is so much of my work since
.

Editor’s blurb from the first page of the original magazine appearance: OSSER KNEW EXACTLY WHAT HE WANTED, WHY HE WANTED IT, AND HOW TO GET IT—EXCEPT THAT EACH ONE OF HIS REASONS WAS TOTALLY WRONG!

“The World Well Lost”
: first published in
Universe Science Fiction
, June 1953. Written late 1952 or early 1953.

In an unpublished note in 1980 TS pointed out the similarity between Grunty in “The World Well Lost” and characters in his 1949 story “Minority Report” and his 1960 story “Need” (
This guy is very real to me—more so than many I have met in the flesh
). The full quote can be found on p. 381 of Volume V of The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon.

“The World Well Lost” is included in an anthology of “Gay Stories from Alice Munro to Yukio Mishima,”
Meanwhile, in Another Part of the Forest
, edited by Alberto Manguel and Craig Stephenson. In the editors’ introduction to Sturgeon’s story, they write: “Theodore Sturgeon was a science fiction writer who revolutionized the genre.… One subject that Sturgeon legitimized for science fiction was sex, in all its astounding diversity. ‘The World Well Lost’ was ground-breaking when it was published in 1953—the first science fiction story to sympathetically portray homosexuality. According to the ‘Prime Directive’ which Sturgeon later created for the Star Trek television series, the overriding law of the United Federation of Planets ‘prohibits Federation interference with the normal development of alien life and societies.’ In his fiction, Sturgeon gleefully challenges our reading of this directive again and again by asking: in any society, what does the notion of ‘normal development’ signify? And under whose social code—in ‘The World Well Lost’ there is more than one—is any of us allowed the fulfilment of personal freedom?”

James Gunn in
Alternate Worlds, The Illustrated History of Science Fiction
says, in regard to “Sturgeon’s explorations in personal statement, such as those that turn upon physical abnormality or human taboos”: “Because of Sturgeon other writers have been freer to write what they wished to write and able to find a market for it.”

In his 1953 essay “Why So Much Syzygy?” Sturgeon said,
“Bianca’s Hands” and “The World Well Lost” cause the violently extreme reactions they do because of the simple fact that the protagonist was happy with the situation
.

In a “Postscript” included in his 1960 novel
Venus Plus X
, Sturgeon says:

I once wrote a fairly vivid story about a man being unfaithful to his wife and no one made any scandalous remarks about me. I then wrote a specific kind of narrative about a woman being unfaithful to her husband and nobody had anything scandalous to say about my wife
. But
I wrote an empathetic sort of tale about some homosexuals and my mailbox filled up with cards drenched with scent and letters written in purple ink with green capitals. As good Philos says herein:
you
cannot be objective about sex, especially when it’s outside certain parameters. Hence this disclaimer, friend: keep your troubles to yourself. I wear no silken sporran
(The latter is the clothing of the bisexual beings in
Venus Plus X
; the “empathetic sort of tale” referred to is “The World Well Lost.”

“… And My Fear Is Great …”
: first published in
Beyond Fantasy Fiction
, July 1953 (first issue of a short-lived fantasy magazine edited by H. L. Gold). A handwritten notation on the carbon copy of the manuscript of this story indicates that it was sent to
Galaxy
(i.e., to Gold, possibly because he’d requested a fantasy for his new magazine) on Jan. 17, 1953. Given Sturgeon’s writing-and-marketing habits, we can be fairly sure it was written in the first two weeks of January, 1953.

Introducing this story in his 1979 collection
The Golden Helix
, Sturgeon wrote:

This is one of my favorite stories. It appeared a long time ago in a hardcover collection, which (like most such) disappeared fairly soon, and when the collection went into paperback, this story was dropped. It was a convention at the time to fill up tables of contents with as many titles as possible, and the longer stories filled up the book with fewer titles. A great many went to limbo because of that, and it is gratifying to have this one back in the light
.

I’ve been a “wordaholic” all my life, reveling in the texture and feel and shape and music of words; and outside of Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric,” I know of no more exquisite and moving passage than “The Irish Girl’s Lament,” included in this story, and also the title-giver. I found it in an essay by W. B. Yeats called “What Modern Poetry?” in which he decried artifice and artificiality in poetry, and said that the best poetry, the real poetry, came from the lips and hearts of the people, speaking in their own idiom. He quoted this lament as an example, affirming that he did not write it; it is not his. Therefore I cannot acknowledge it as his, but can only express my gratitude to him for leading me to such a treasure
.

As Sturgeon notes above, the prose poem Joyce recites to the tattered man, the source for this story’s title, can be found in a 1901 essay by William Butler Yeats (titled “What Is ‘Popular Poetry’?” in his volume
Essays and Introductions
). Yeats does not indicate that he heard this lament and wrote it down. He introduces it (without clarifying the source) into his argument by saying, “If men did not remember nor half remember impossible things, and, it may be, if the worship of sun and moon had not left a faint reverence behind it, what Aran fisher-girl would sing:—‘It is late last night the dog was speaking of you …’ ” The entire lament quoted by Sturgeon’s heroine follows. As the Aran Islands are off the west coast of Ireland and Yeats in 1901 was already spending much time with one Lady Gregory, a collector of the lore of the west of Ireland, perhaps Lady Gregory acquainted Yeats with this extraordinary fisher-girl’s lament.

Among Sturgeon’s papers is a letter from Richard Lovelace at Yale University, dated May 2, 1953, which begins: “Thank you for writing the novella in the first issue of
Beyond
. It is the finest work of literature that I’ve seen in any popular magazine. I don’t just say that because I like Yeats and have come very recently to accept the beliefs behind the story, either, although of course that’s a large part of it. I think it is better writing than Bradbury’s ever done, in both expression and construction. You have the power to do a great service by writing fiction like this.”

The source for the all-night cafe Don went to night after night, where he first saw Joyce, is Sturgeon’s life as an impecunious young writer in New York City in 1940. In a 1972 interview, TS told David Hartwell:

I used to hang out in a place called Martin’s 57th Street Cafeteria. It was an all-night cafeteria, where all kinds of bums and weirdos used to hang out and talk all night, and they’d drink the ketchup and eat the sugar, nobody had any money whatsoever. You could nurse one cup of coffee all night long and pay a nickel and go out, y’know. And there were all kinds of very interesting conversations that developed in Martin’s
.

It seems likely that some aspects of this story, for example Don’s rat story and his revelation about the wasps, are partly a reflection of TS’s experiences as a Dianetics suditor and auditee.

On the first page of this story’s appearance in
Beyond Fantasy Fiction
, the title is followed by an editor’s blurb which reads: AS WHOSE WOULDN’T BE, WHEN THE DEMON WITHIN MEETS AN EVEN MORE FRIGHTFUL MONSTER WITHOUT!

There are some slight textual differences between this story as it appears
here and previously published versions, because we have made use of Sturgeon’s original ms. instead of the published text, which had been edited, sometime clumsily, by Gold. The differences are minor except for the restoration of six important sentences in the paragraph near the end of the story that begins:
Right. We’re goin’ to make mistakes
. With this restoration, one can see here the seeds of the final page of the last section of
More Than Human
, which was written soon after this story and which shares some other thematic links with “… And My Fear Is Great …”

“The Wages of Synergy”
: first published in
Startling Stories
, August 1953. Probably written early in 1953 and submitted to Gold and rejected, before it was ultimately purchased by Samuel Mines, editor of
Startling Stories
.

“The Dark Room”
: first published in
Fantastic
, July-August 1953. Written in late winter or early spring 1953.

Sturgeon’s 1979 introduction to this story:

I would like to state here and now that the above was not my title; there is a room in the story but at no time is it dark, nor is darkness of any particular significance to the story. I called it “Alien Bee,” which is probably not the best possible title for it either, but a better one, I think, than the one the editor chose. Anyway, I am keeping his title for bibliographical purposes
.

Written in 1953, this story is one of my first efforts to develop different styles. Anyone with any verbal facility can develop a style, polish and perfect it until it becomes that writer’s special trademark, and you can come a long way in the writing business by doing that. However, like any specialization, it can inhibit and even imprison you, so that all the characters speak like each other and like the author. The writers I admire most—Samuel R. Delany, to name a single one—are masters of many styles, not just one, and no one will ever write one-paragraph pastiches or lampoons of his work
.

So here is a hard-heeling, fast-paced, brawling, macho Sturgeon story. And if it turns out that you don’t like this kind of person—well, neither do I
.

When the parasite entity in this story tells Tom, “we are free to pass and repass in front of their silly eyes,” Sturgeon may be consciously alluding to a similar phrase in the poem “Brahma” by his distant relative Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“Talent”
: first published in
Beyond Fantasy Fiction
, September 1953. Written in spring 1953.

Magazine blurb: EXTERMINATING PESTS WAS JOKEY’S SPECIALTY—AND HE WAS 100% EFFICIENT AT IT!

“A Way of Thinking”
: first published in
Amazing Stories
, October-November 1953. Written in spring 1953.

In 1981 Sturgeon wrote the following introduction to “A Way of Thinking” when it was reprinted by
Amazing Stories
as part of a “Hall of Fame” series:

Before I was a writer I was a sailor in the U.S. Merchant Marine. I went to some strange places and met some strange people. One of the most memorable of all was the man you’re about to meet (if you haven’t met him before). My description of him, and the episodes of the deck winch, the tarpaper cat-house, and the flying fan, are not fiction, but reportage. Tall, feline, soft-voiced, always laid-back and relaxed, with those long green eyes, Kelley is unforgettable, even though I’ve not see him for many years. I’m quite sure I have more to say about him; one of these days he will slide gently into my typewriter and amaze me
.

It says in this story that “he’s in Atlanta now.” That’s Atlanta Penitentiary, I’m sorry to say. I quite forget who told me that, and I never did learn why that was so, and I’ve always wondered. I am sure, however, that what got him there was the result of his unique way of thinking. I am also sure that his stay could not have been long; as he once took the outside off a building to get in, he was quite capable of taking the inside out of a jail to get out. Don’t ask me how. Ask Kelley
.

The line “he’s in Atlanta now” is not actually in this story; TS may have been thinking of other times he’d written about Kelley: for example in the 1950 essay “Author, Author,” included as an appendix in Volume VI of The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon.

In an interview on Dec. 6, 1975 Sturgeon told me:
my father died of Parkinson’s Disease, which is a horrible thing. Every day you know you’re going to be worse than the day before. And he finally turned into just a mush. His brother took care of him. He had to be fed, and he had to be taken to the bathroom. It was sad
.

“The Silken-Swift”
: first published simultaneously in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
, November 1953 and in
E Pluribus Unicorn
by Theodore Sturgeon, a collection of stories published by Abelard Press in November 1953. Written in spring 1953.

The song Barbara shares with Del is credited on the copyright page of
E Pluribus Unicorn
, where TS writes:
I should like to express my profound gratitude to Christine Hamilton, who, as a poet, authored the poem “Unicorn” and permitted its use here, and, as a mother, authored the undersigned
. Christine Hamilton Sturgeon was an ambitious (but mostly unpublished) novelist and short story writer as well as a poet.

On the Science Fiction Radio Show in 1983, Sturgeon was asked, “What works of your own do you think are particularly good? Which ones are you proudest of?” He replied:
“The Silken-Swift,” the unicorn story, for example, I’m very proud of. I love that story
. He then mentions a story he’s just written, “Seasoning,” and then goes on:
Let’s see, looking for others of what I would call my favorite stories … I do like that unicorn story. I like the way it’s written; it’s a very passionate story and it has something I consider very important to say. There again I was combating the assumption that a woman who is not a virgin is not as good a woman as she might be. That was the basic statement of the story. It’s a wonder that it came out intact that way
.