And Now the News (54 page)

Such being the case, why doesn't some psychiatrist or psychotherapist pick up on the technique suggested by this story? Intuitively I know that it, or something like it, just has to work. Intuition, of course, is no substitute for expertise. In other words, if I knew enough I'd be doing it instead of writing about it. But it's a valid notion just the same
.

Editor's blurb from the first page of the original magazine appearance: IT WAS WHOLLY, SHOCKINGLY IMPOSSIBLE FOR HIM TO TAKE THIS CASE—ONE REASON EVERYBODY KNEW; THE OTHER HE KEPT TO HIMSELF—ONLY THERE WAS NOT ONE SINGLE WAY FOR HIM TO GET OUT OF IT!

Sturgeon, after submitting “And Now the News …” to F&SF, told F&SF editor Anthony Boucher the story of his collaboration with Heinlein, in a letter dated May 21, 1956: I forgot to tell you one most important thing about ANTN: a year ago last Feb I was in the blackest reaches of Avichi and wrote a desperate yell to Bob Heinlein, saying I could write but had nothing to say; by airmail special I got a thick missive containing 26 valid story ideas, ranging from a single line (“… the shade of a little cat padding through eternity looking for that one familiar lap”) to 2
-
300 wd explications of epic ideas. Thru getting this I made the discovery that I still couldn't write, which made things worse for me instead of better, but it was a most valuable thing to know and saved me a lot of searching in wrong directions. Then came the beginning of the upturn;
the first of these RH ideas was what you just bought. The next was THE OTHER MAN, upcoming later this year in GALAXY, and so far that's all. But there will be more of them, and my current ambition is to keep them out of all other collections and run them as a book dedicated to Bob. Hey, how about RH POSITIVE as a title?!

Three-fourths of the way through this story, Sturgeon mentions the inscription above the door of doctor Fred's clinic—“Only man can fathom man”—and says, “It was from Robert Lindner.” Possibly the quote is from Lindner's 1954 best-seller
The Fifty-Minute Hour: A Collection of True Psychoanalytic Tales
.

“The Waiting Thing Inside”
by Theodore Sturgeon and Don Ward; first published in
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
, September 1956.

In his Feb. 4, 1956 letter to Anthony Boucher, TS wrote: In addition I have found (and I don't know what would have happened to me if I hadn't) a collaborator—Don Ward, a really wonderful guy, a good editor, and above all a patient man. Don dreams 'em up and I write 'em my way and submit them without his seeing them; that last seems to be the thing which makes it possible at all. We sold a Western that got a Special Mention in the EQMM contest, another that has the lead in Howard Browne's new magazine, and have on the pan another EQMM murder mystery and a Western aimed at the SEP [Saturday Evening Post]. This suggests that both “The Waiting Thing Inside” and “The Deadly Innocent” were written, and sold to the magazines they eventually appeared in, before February 1956, probably in the autumn of 1955. Don Ward, in his introduction to the 1973 Sturgeon/Ward collection Sturgeon's West, confirms that “The Waiting Thing Inside” is the story that “won an honorable mention in one of EQMM's annual prize story competitions.”

Editor's introduction to this story from the original magazine appearance:

“We are happy to welcome the first appearance in
EQMM
of Theodore Sturgeon and Don Ward.… Mr. Sturgeon—one of the ‘big names' in the field of science fiction—tells us little of his awards and accomplishments, but those of you who are science fiction fans know all about Ted. However, here is a little background that you will find revealing. His primary education, he says, was simply ‘academic parents.' For his secondary education, he simply ran away to sea. For his higher education, he drove a truck, served as a short-order cook, did a stint of farm labor, and worked
in hotels and in advertising. As a post-graduate course, he got married, and now he and his wife have a son Robin and a daughter Tandy. His hobbies? Maybe you will be surprised, and then again maybe you won't: they include a hot guitar and a hot-rod truck.

“Don Ward got his Ph.D. more formally—in 1941 in political science at Syracuse University. He taught history and political science for five years, then switched to the publishing business where, for the past ten years, he has been deeply involved in Westerns and in science fiction, and for seven of those ten years has been editor of
Zane Grey's Western Magazine
for Dell. He is married to a beautiful blonde, has three sons and one daughter, and his natural habitat is Exurbia.

“Mr. Sturgeon's and Mr. Ward's collaborative story is a tale of Western crime with emphasis on characterization. You will meet a strange triangle in Delia, Vic, and Roy—with the pent-up passions of long, shabby years, of calculating, hating, fearing, repressing, and, most dangerous of all, of waiting …”

“The Deadly Innocent”
by Theodore Sturgeon and Don Ward; first published in
Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine
, November 1956. Editor's blurb from the first page of the original magazine appearance: THIS LOVELY MANTRAP WOULDN'T HURT A FLY—LANCE WAS NO LITERARY MAN, BUT WHEN HE MET GLAMOROUS ELOISE, AUTHOR OF BEST-SELLING ROMANCES, HE WAS A GONE GANDER. JUST HOW FAR GONE, LANCE HAD NO IDEA UNTIL LATER.

“And Now the News …”:
first published in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
, December 195
6
. Editor's introduction to this story from the original magazine appearance: “Mr. Sturgeon says that this is a science fiction story and he can by God prove it. You may decide that it's a fantasy … or possibly a mystery … or conceivably a surrealist view of straight reality. In other words, it's a story outside of any ordinary commercial category, a story that creates its own genre—and one of the most distinguished stories that
F&SF
has ever had the pleasure of publishing.” This is strong praise, and I'd like to add that I've long considered this one of the finest short stories ever written by an American writer. I have also noted, in my book
The 20th Century's Greatest Hits
, that with this story “Theodore Sturgeon became the first modern storyteller to call attention to the enormous impact on Everyman, on the individual human being, of
the rapid evolution of our communications media during the twentieth century.”

Sturgeon's introduction to “And Now the News …” in his 1979 collection
The Golden Helix:

It was 1956, and the beginning of a conscious realization that to limit science fiction to outer space was just that—a limitation, and that science fiction has and should have as limitless a character as poetry; further, that it has a real function in inner space. This in turn led me to a redefinition of science itself, and to an increasing preoccupation with humanity not only as the subject of science, but as its source. It has become my joy to find out what makes it tick, especially when it ticks unevenly
.

One more thing about this story: I had written to a friend with the complaint that I hadn't an idea in my head, and needed one urgently. On a cold November morning my wife and I opened his response. Twenty-six story ideas—a paragraph, a sentence, a suggestion, a situation. Clipped to the pages was a check with a note: “I have the feeling your credit is bent.' As my wife and I stared at it and each other—the furnace stopped. That furnace would stop for only two reasons: the house was warm enough, or we had just run out of fuel, and it certainly wasn't warm enough. Right on cue. We both wept
.

This story springs from one of the springboards in that package, and the springboarder's name is Robert A. Heinlein, and I'm pleased at this opportunity to acknowledge this single favor among the many he has done me by his writings and by his—well, his being
.

While I said above that “The Other Man” uses a Heinlein-letter idea as it springboard, I would describe the genesis of “And Now the News …” differently. In this case, a good argument could be made for considering this story as something written “by Theodore Sturgeon and Robert Heinlein,” because Heinlein in his letter provided the full plot of the story in great detail—and even its remarkable punch-line. Here is the “idea” from the letter:

“Once there was a man who could not stand it. First he lost the power to read and then the headlines did not bother him any longer. Then he lost the power to understand speech and then the radio could not bother him. He became quite happy and the wrinkles smoothed out of his face and he quit being tense and he painted and modelled in clay and danced and listened to music and enjoyed life.

“Then a clever psychiatrist penetrated his fugue and made him sane
again. Now he could read and listen to the radio and he became aware again of the Cold War and juvenile delinquency and rapes and rapacity and et cetera ad nauseam.

“He still couldn't stand it. He killed quite a number of people before they got him.”

One reason it is surprising that the plot of this story originates with Heinlein and not Sturgeon is that Sturgeon himself had for years been an obsessive listener to the hourly news on the radio. The opening scene of his 1946 story “Mewhu's Jet” describes such a man in humorous and painful detail.

Another way it's surprising that this story was plotted by the dean of modern science fiction, the man who practically invented the medium, is that Sturgeon had a lot of worries about whether the story would be bought and published, once he'd finished it, because it's not exactly a “science fiction” story and therefore not necessarily appropriate to a science fiction magazine (or, for other reasons, to any other genre fiction magazine). TS wrote to Anthony Boucher in May 1956 about “And Now the News …”: Here's its history. I wrote it for EQMM's last contest; Joe and Bob did me the kindness of holding the final decision on First Prize until they'd seen it. Bob Mills, having read it now not once but twice, is gratifyingly enthused, but of course can't buy by himself. I don't know what Fred's feeling is, but from Lee I got the most exorbitantly praiseful rejection note I have seen in eighteen years of professional writing. He too has read it twice now, and (Bob tells me) feels the same way. Reason for exclusion from EQMM: crime angle not strong enough for the EQ reader. Reason for second reading: Bob's suggestion that it might be slightly recast to increase this: i.e., an opening “In the matter of the deaths of (four names) …” and a framing of a private eye (or crime-school student, or M.A. looking for doctorate) who is hunting the reasons for these reasonless killings. Reason for ultimate rejection: its length, which Fred felt was too great for EQ; he'd willingly buy it at 4M if I can do it. I probably can but dammit I won't
.

After its first showing to EQMM I sent it to Horace [Gold, of Galaxy] and then to John [Campbell, of Astounding]
to see if it could wind up those goddam advances and leave me clear for you. Horace was afraid of it because he has been flooded with psychiatric stories and doesn't know how the readers would like it; he has regarded all my recent sales to him as dangerously borderline (in terms of the field and/or previous in the literary
evolution of the form. He asks specifically for it in 9 (now 4) months for re-evaluation; he personally loves it. John rejected it out of hand with the extraordinarily astute comment: “This is a splendid and splendidly written story, Ted, but you're going to have a hell of time selling it. It isn't a crime story, it isn't a romance, western, fantasy, s-f; it's something unto itself
. The modern reader wants to know before he reads something what it is he's going to read, for all his demands for originality.” I boggle at his dictum about its not being s-f. I think it's definitive s-f, the famous Sturgeon definition being “a human story investigating a humanly soluble problem, cast in a narrative which could not be told without the science aspect.” If psychiatry isn't a science, chemotherapy is, and I'd like to see you try this story without chemotherapy
.

Thence, on Don Ward's insistence, (Don is partner to a (regrettable) new literary agency these days, but I go along with it on a trial basis and because only Don handles my stuff) it went the rounds of some higherpaying markets. Reaction was consistently favorable, and consistently no. The essence of most of it (where opinion was expressed at all) bears out my opinion that there is an interesting parallel to be drawn between the bawdy stories re monks and nuns circa Bocaccio, and the rash of psychiatrist jokes now current. These are, I opine, all expressions of awe and worship, couched in terms of little-boy defiance. The ironic cast of AND NOW THE NEWS speaks too pointedly of the psychiatrist who does everything right and destroys the patient; editors seem timid about this, never for themselves, always on behalf of their readers. One of the most entrancing examples of this is the editor who rejected the story without explanation, and then worriedly looked me up later to buy beer and explain that it was (for once, he asserted) a personal thing; that the story disturbed him because someone very close to him had been in and out of institutions for years and he was full up to here with psychotherapists and their cant, their superiority and “infallibility.” Especially Freudians. “I would publish a story any time,” he told me gravely, “—matter of fact, I'm actively looking for one—which destroys the myth of the infallibility of the Freudian analyst.” I was speechless with astonishment, and still reverberate like a struck gong. This man is so reverent and awed that he couldn't recall what he was confessing to me, or what about!

Don Ward sent the story back to Bob Mills for the EQMM second look, and Bob returned it to me “Wet,” he said, “with my tears.” Don wanted it back to recirculate in the slicks, but this time I said no; you hadn't seen
it yet and should. Not only would its purchase square my account with Mercury [F&SF's publisher], I think I'd be happier to see it in your readers' hands than anyone else's anywhere. They are many and varied, those readers, but the one thing they have in common is that their reverence and awe is more highly placed than that of the general mags, and I don't think they'll be hurt. Also, more of 'em appreciate cadence in writing than other readers in the field; I won't deny that that matters to me
.