Slow Sculpture (42 page)

And suddenly I wrote. As I’ve said, I do not know how long it took to write the stories, but I typed one a week for eleven consecutive weeks, and after a short hiatus, a twelfth—all while I was writing a novel. So the first tribute goes to Wina
.

My next acknowledgment is to Tom Dardis, not simply for accepting the book for publication, but for agreeing to use this particular table of contents. For one thing I am delighted to have in one place exactly (with one exception) those “Wina” stories—but that’s personal and sentimental. My most profound appreciation is extended to him for his willingness to include some of the stories which cannot be categorized “science fiction.”

Science fiction is my best friend and my worst enemy. But for one or two notable examples, science fiction and science fiction writers are relegated to the back pages of the book review section, not to be taken seriously by serious critics. “I don’t read science fiction,” says Mr. J. Q. Public,
with
On the Beach
and
Dr. Strangelove
and
Lord of the Flies
and
Messiah
and a half hundred others on the bookshelf behind him, and he marches out to see
2001—
all science fiction but never called science fiction and virtually never written by anyone who has ever appeared in
Analog
or
Galaxy
or
New Worlds
except, perhaps, in reprint, and some of the magazines which run reprints (and I’m glad they do). The predicament of the professional science-fiction writer who takes himself and his work seriously could be called comic if it weren’t for such unfunny things as hospital bills and the IRS, and why more of them aren’t certifiably paranoid is a greater wonder than any of them have yet wrought. It seems a literal truth that to have acquired a reputation in science fiction is to be reflexively relegated to the 25th Century with Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, all wrapped up in a colored funny paper
.

Yet the best writers in the field (as one of the cognoscenti once pointed out) write science FICTION, not SCIENCE fiction. Let me tell you something: you cannot write good fiction about ideas. You can only write good fiction about people. Good science fiction writers are good fiction writers. When a blatant dabbler like Kingsley Amis gets three columns in
Time
magazine while nobody ever heard of a polished and thoughtful writer like Edgar Pangborn, it breaks my heart
.

Very special thanks must go to two bright young editors, Merrill Miller and Jared Rutter, who bought most of the stories in this book. They asked me for stories. They didn’t ask for science fiction or fantasy stories; they did not demand the currently obligatory skin scene—they just bought my stories as they arrived; and one can approach the typewriter with a wonderful sense of wingspread with a market like that
.

Nothing will ever stop me from writing science fiction, but there sure is a plot afoot to keep me from writing anything else, and I won’t have it. Perhaps now you can understand why I’m so pleased with this collection
.

My final tribute has to do with the one story in this book which is not the product of that astonishing summer. I wrote “To Here and the Easel” for a Ballantine book now long out of print. It was called
Star Short Novels,
and when Ballantine issued one of the three novels in a separate volume I knew it would not be reprinted, and asked, and was graciously granted permission to use a story in another book. It was published in 1954 and has been seen nowhere else since. —TS

“The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff”; first published in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
, November and December, 1955. Teaser, most likely written by the editor, Bob Mills: “CRITICS FREQUENTLY COMPLAIN, WITH NOT A LITTLE JUSTICE, THAT THE GREATEST LACK IN SCIENCE FICTION IS CHARACTERIZATION, THE FULL-BODIED DEVELOPMENT OF LIVING PEOPLE. NO WRITER HAS DONE MORE TO ANSWER THAT CHARGE THAN THEODORE STURGEON; AND THIS NEW AND CURIOUSLY TITLED SHORT NOVEL IS, TO MY TASTE, ONE OF THE FINEST PIECES OF WORK THAT EVEN STURGEON HAS YET ACCOMPLISHED, COMPARABLE ONLY TO HIS
MORE THAN HUMAN
IN THE RICHNESS AND DEPTH OF ITS CHARACTER-CREATION. YOU’RE ABOUT TO MEET A FASCINATING AND REAL GROUP OF PEOPLE; AND IN THEIR COMPANY YOU’LL LIVE THROUGH AN ABSORBING STORY, LEARN A NEW ASPECT OF ALIEN OBSERVATION … AND EVEN COME TO KNOW THE NATURE OF THOSE DEVICES WHICH OUR LANGUAGE CAN ONLY APPROXIMATELY RENDER AS [WIDGET] AND [WADGET].”

In terms of chronological order, this story should have appeared in Volume X of
The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon
, but was too long for that volume. The character Robin in this story is named after Sturgeon’s first son, who was in turn named after the character in Sturgeon’s story, “Maturity,” Robin English. At the date of publication of this story, Robin Sturgeon, like the character, was three. This story contains one of the earliest, most complex and least didactic examples of Sturgeon’s methodological credo, which he later labeled: “Ask the next question,” symbolized by a Q with an arrow through it. (In his later years, Sturgeon wore this symbol as a necklace and usually included a sketch of the symbol with his signature. The symbol is now used on the annual Sturgeon Memorial Short Story Award trophy.) More than the standard notion of “critical thinking,” “ask the next question” was meant to interrogate the very frameworks in which commonplace inquiry take place, and to explode conventional wisdoms and prejudices as a result. The ability to do that is presented here as a “synapse” necessary to the survival of the human species itself. The method is also depicted as therapeutic, and the flash of revelation that instantaneously reorders a personality is based on experiences Sturgeon himself had in various therapies. As in the case of the protagonist Gerry in
More Than Human
, and many other Sturgeon
characters, such a life-changing therapeutic experience is at the heart of many of Sturgeon’s narratives. The critical examination of the character Halvorsen’s guilt over being different sexually is one example among many of Sturgeon’s interest in critiquing sexual repression and conventionality. On a minor note, the sandwich that Mary Haunt makes in this story was one of Sturgeon’s favorites.

“
The Beholders”;
1964. Previously unpublished. This story was written while Sturgeon lived in Woodstock, New York, and should have appeared in Volume XI. Sturgeon was familiar with LSD, as he went through psychedelic therapy in 1964 and 1965 with the therapist Jim Hayes, which produced the autobiographical essay,
Argyll
(published in 1993).

“
It’s You!
”; First published in
Adam
, January 1970. Reprinted in
Sturgeon is Alive and Well
. Though, as mentioned above, Wina Sturgeon recalls this story being prompted by a remark she made about a boyfriend ending a relationship with her, ironically, the story recounts a process quite close to that which Sturgeon went through with Wina, as she made new clothes for him, encouraged him to wear jewelry, and brought him into a social context very different than others he had encountered.

“
Slow Sculpture
”; first published in
Galaxy
, February 1970. Reprinted in
Sturgeon is Alive and Well
. Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Short Story.

“The Girl Who Knew What They Meant”;
first published in
Knight
, February 1970. Reprinted in
Sturgeon is Alive and Well
. Again, Wina Sturgeon recalls the idea for this story coming from a chance encounter she described to Sturgeon.

“The Patterns of Dorne
”; first published in
Knight
, May 1970,. Reprinted in
Sturgeon is Alive and Well
.

“Crate”;
first published in
Knight
, October 1970. Reprinted in
Sturgeon is Alive and Well
.

“Suicide”;
first published in
Adam
, June 1970. Reprinted in
Sturgeon is Alive and Well
.

“
Uncle Fremmis”;
first published in
Adam, 1970
. Reprinted in
Sturgeon is Alive and Well
.

“Necessary and Sufficient”;
first published in
Galaxy
, April 1971. Teaser: “IT WAS MOST EFFECTIVE BIRTH CONTROL … BUT COULD ANYONE BORN SURVIVE IT?” The series of notes written by the unseen girlfriend in different modalities (comic, furious, distraught, etc.) recalls one of Sturgeon’s favorite books,
Exercises in Style
by Raymond Queneau, in which the same story is retold in 99 different styles. Sturgeon used the book in almost all of his writing classes.

“The Verity File
”; first published in
Galaxy
, May 1971. Teaser: “YESTERDAY’S TRUTHS ARE DYING—AND TODAY’S FEEL NONE TOO GOOD!” Sturgeon previously used this narrative technique (a story told in interoffice memos, letters, and reports) in his novel
Some of Your Blood
(1961).

“Occam’s Scalpel”;
first published in
If
, August 1971. Reprinted in the collection
The Stars are the Styx
(Dell 1979), which contained author introductions to each story. Sturgeon’s intro to this one:

Who was the richest man in the world in 1971, while I was writing this? And what came creeping into my typewriter to suggest that any particular rich man would die under inexplicably mysterious circumstances?

I am unabashedly proud of some of the things I have done and can do with a typewriter. I’ve gone through a lot of grinding and polishing and tumbling to learn how to do it
.

But there is something else that happens once in a while, something I’m unaware of at the time, which doesn’t manifest itself to me until after I’ve written a passage and reread it. I see then some hundreds or thousands of words written outside any learned idiom, written, as it were, in a different “voice,” and containing, sometimes, factual material which I did not and could not have known at the time, and (rather more often) emotional reactions and attitudes which I know I have not experienced. This phenomenon is quite beyond my control; that is, I know of no way to command or evoke it. I just have to wait for it to happen, which it seldom does. When it does, it keeps me humble; when I’m complimented on it, I feel guilty
.

Howard Hughes, the reclusive billionaire, died in April 1976 of malnutrion.
Sturgeon seems to be implying by this introduction that at the time he wrote “Occam’s Scalpel,” it was not known that Hughes would die of starvation like the rich man in the story.

The “piney-birchy woods with plenty of mountain laurel” and the “fire station on the Village Green” recall Woodstock, NY, where Sturgeon lived from 1960–1966; the description of the brother of the protagonist as being one of the “night people” is a reference to Jean Shepherd, the 1950s-’60s NYC radio show host who was a friend of Sturgeon’s and who called his fans “the night people.” (As a lark, Shepherd and Sturgeon decided to promote a non-existent book titled I,
Libertine
written by a nonexistent Frederick R. Ewing. “The night people” became so interested in buying the book that Sturgeon actually wrote it [as what can be described as a romantic historical legal thriller, unlike anything else Sturgeon produced] under the Ewing pseudonym. It was published in 1956 by Ian and Betty Ballantine, who were in on the hoax.)

“
Dazed”;
first published in
Galaxy
, September, 1971. Reprinted in
The Stars Are the Styx
(Dell 1979). Teaser: “TO FIND BLACK, SEARCH WHITE. TO FIND HEAVEN, SEARCH HELL.…” Sturgeon’s intro to the story in
The Stars Are the Styx:

What a strange little story this is! As people keep asking me: “Where do you get your crazy ideas?”

Harlan Ellison claims he gets his from a little old lady in Schenectady, who sends them in a plain brown wrapper. I don’t know her. I think that what I do is to make some sort of sense out of the world and its population, an activity that repeatedly drives me into fantasy as the only area in which logic seems to have any consistency
.

Of one thing I can assure you: virtually no character in my bibliography stands out as clearly in my mind as this dazed man. I don’t think he shows up in a particularly sharp focus to the reader, but he does to me—every gesture, every intonation. And unlike most of my characters, he isn’t modeled on anyone I know. He’s uniquely himself, this dazed man
.

Strange. Very strange
.

Sturgeon worked for
Fortune
magazine as a copywriter from 1948 to 1952. As a young writer in the forties scraping by on almost no money, he spent a great deal of time in the Automat. He also spent summers on a farm in Vermont when he was a young boy, as described in
Argyll
, his autobiographical essay.

“Pruzy’s Pot”;
first published in
National Lampoon
, June, 1972. The house and lifestyle described here reflect the way Ted and Wina lived in Echo Park, Los Angeles, during the early 1970s, as “Niwa’s” name echoes Wina’s. In a small house near the park, they had an extensive garden, a rabbit hutch in which they raised rabbits for food, a pet boa constrictor and a pet squirrel. Their organic, do-it-yourself lifestyle was guided by the research done by Wina in her job as the consumer affairs correspondent for KPFK radio. There was in fact a real dog named Sonya (who was in actuality a good-for-nothing dog), though she was owned not by Ted but by his daughter, Tandy. The Echo Park house did not, however, have an alien toilet. “Pruzy’s Pot” was reprinted in a limited edition volume (some packaged with an audio tape of Sturgeon reading the story) by Hypatia Press in 1986, with a foreword by Spider Robinson and an afterword by Jayne Sturgeon. Spider Robinson’s foreword, with his kind permission, is reprinted in this volume.

Theodore Sturgeon was born on February 26, 1918, and died in Eugene, Oregon, on May 8, 1985. A resident of New York City, Woodstock, New York, Los Angeles, and Springfield, Oregon, he was the author of more than thirty novels and short story collections. He won the International Fantasy Award for his novel
More Than Human;
the Hugo Award and Nebula Award for his short story “Slow Sculpture,” the Outstanding Achievement Award from the International Society of Science Fiction, Horror, and Fantasy for the
Star Trek
screenplay,
Amok Time;
and the Gaylactica/Spectrum Award for his ground-breaking story about homosexuality, “The World Well Lost.” For the influence on comic books of his short story “It,” he won the Inkpot Award. His idea of “bleshing” (the interaction of different individuals in a gestalt from
More Than Human
) was influential for the art of performers from The Grateful Dead to the Blue Man Group. He was known for the creation of Sturgeon’s Law (Every genre, without exception, is 90 percent crap) and the credo “Ask the next question.” For his lifetime of work, he was awarded a World Fantasy Achievement Award, and, in 2000, was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.