Theodore Sturgeon
Theodore Sturgeon (; born Edward Hamilton Waldo, February 26, 1918 – May 8, 1985) was an American fiction author of primarily fantasy, science fiction and horror, as well as a critic. He wrote approximately 400 reviews and more than 120 short stories, 11 novels and several scripts for "". Sturgeon's science fiction novel "More Than Human" (1953) won the 1954 International Fantasy Award (for SF and fantasy) as the year's best novel, and the Science Fiction Writers of America ranked "Baby Is Three" number five among the "Greatest Science Fiction Novellas of All Time" to 1964. Ranked by votes  for all of their pre-1965 novellas, Sturgeon was second among authors, behind Robert Heinlein. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Sturgeon in 2000, its fifth class of two dead and two living writers. Biography. Sturgeon was born Edward Hamilton Waldo in Staten Island, New York, in 1918. His name was legally changed to Theodore Sturgeon at age eleven after his mother's divorce and remarriage to William Dicky ("Argyll") Sturgeon. He sold his first story in 1938 to the McClure Syndicate, which bought much of his early work. At first he wrote mainly short stories, primarily for  genre magazines such as "Astounding" and "Unknown", but also for general-interest publications such as "Argosy Magazine". He used the pen name "E. Waldo Hunter" when two of his stories ran in the same issue of "Astounding". A few of his early stories were signed "Theodore H. Sturgeon." Sturgeon ghost-wrote one Ellery Queen mystery novel, "The Player on the Other Side" (Random House, 1963). This novel was praised by critic H. R. F. Keating: "[I] had almost finished writing "Crime and Mystery: the 100 Best Books", in which I had included "The Player on the Other Side" ... placing the  book squarely in the Queen canon" when he learned that it had been written by Sturgeon. Similarly, William DeAndrea, author and winner of Mystery Writers of America awards, selecting his ten favorite mystery novels for the magazine "Armchair Detective", picked "The Player on the Other Side" as one of them. He said: "This book changed my life ... and made a raving mystery fan (and therefore ultimately a mystery writer) out of me. ... The book must be 'one of the most skilful pastiches in the history of literature. An amazing piece of work, whomever did it'." Disliking arguments with John W.  Campbell over editorial decisions, after 1950 Sturgeon only published one story in "Astounding". Sturgeon wrote the screenplays for the "" episodes "Shore Leave" (1966) and "Amok Time" (1967, written up and published as a Bantam Books "Star Trek Fotonovel" in 1978). The latter featured the first appearance of pon farr, the Vulcan mating ritual, the sentence "Live long and prosper" and the Vulcan hand symbol. Sturgeon also wrote several "" scripts that were never produced. One of these first introduced the Prime Directive. He also wrote an episode of the Saturday morning show "Land of the Lost", "The Pylon Express", in 1975 . Two of Sturgeon's stories were adapted for "The New Twilight Zone". One, "A Saucer of Loneliness", was broadcast in 1986 and was dedicated to his memory. Another short story, "Yesterday was Monday", was the inspiration for "The New Twilight Zone" episode "A Matter of Minutes". His 1944 novella "Killdozer!" was the inspiration for the 1974 made-for-TV movie, Marvel comic book, and alternative rock band of the same name, as well as becoming the colloquial name for Marvin Heemeyer's 2004 bulldozer rage incident. Sturgeon published the "first stories in science fiction which dealt with homosexuality, 'The World  Well Lost' [June 1953] and 'Affair With a Green Monkey' [May 1957]", and sometimes put gay subtext in his work, such as the back-rub scene in "Shore Leave", or in his Western story, "Scars". Though not as well known to the general public as contemporaries like Isaac Asimov or Ray Bradbury, Sturgeon is well known among readers of mid-20th-century science fiction anthologies. At the height of his popularity in the 1950s he was the most anthologized English-language author alive. Three Sturgeon stories were adapted for the 1950s NBC radio anthology X Minus One: "A Saucer of Loneliness  (broadcast twice}, The Stars Are The Styx" and "Mr. Costello, Hero". Carl Sagan described "To Here and the Easel" as "a stunning portrait of personality disassociation as perceived from the inside", and further said that many of Sturgeon's works were among the "rare few science‐fiction novels [that] combine a standard science‐fiction theme with a deep human sensitivity". John Clute wrote in "The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction": "His influence upon writers like Harlan Ellison and Samuel R. Delany was seminal, and in his life and work he was a powerful and generally liberating influence in post-WWII US sf". He  won comparatively few genre awards. (One was the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement from the 1985 World Fantasy Convention.) Sturgeon's original novels were all published between 1950 and 1961, and the bulk of his short story work dated from the 1940s and 1950s. Though he continued to write through 1983, his work rate dipped noticeably in the later years of his life; a 1971 story collection entitled "Sturgeon Is Alive And Well..." addressed Sturgeon's seeming withdrawal from the public eye in a tongue-in-cheek manner. Sturgeon lived for several years in Springfield, Oregon. He died on  May 8, 1985, of lung fibrosis, at Sacred Heart General Hospital in the neighboring city of Eugene. He was a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of Isaac Asimov's fictional group of mystery solvers the Black Widowers. Sturgeon was the inspiration for the recurrent character of Kilgore Trout in the novels of Kurt Vonnegut. Sturgeon's Law. In 1951, Sturgeon coined what is now known as "Sturgeon's Law": This was originally known as "Sturgeon's Revelation"; Sturgeon has said that "Sturgeon's Law" was originally However, the  former statement is now widely referred to as Sturgeon's Law. He is also known for his dedication to a credo of critical thinking that challenged all normative assumptions: "Ask the next question." He represented this credo by the symbol of a Q with an arrow through it, an example of which he wore around his neck and used as part of his signature in the last 15 years of his life. Life and family. Theodore's birth father, Edward Waldo, was a color and dye manufacturer of middling success. With his second wife, Anne, he had one daughter, Joan . Theodore's mother, Christine Hamilton Dicker (Waldo) Sturgeon, was a well-educated writer, watercolorist, and poet who published journalism, poetry, and fiction under the name Felix Sturgeon. His stepfather, William Dickie Sturgeon (sometimes known as Argyll), was a mathematics teacher at a prep school and then Romance Languages Professor at Drexel Institute [later Drexel Institute of Technology] in Philadelphia. Sturgeon's account of his stepfather is included in a posthumous memoir. Sturgeon's sibling, Peter Sturgeon, wrote technical material for the pharmaceutical industry and the WHO, and founded the American branch of Mensa. Sturgeon held a wide variety of jobs  during his lifetime. As an adolescent, he wanted to be a circus acrobat; an episode of rheumatic fever prevented him from pursuing this. From 1935 (aged 17) to 1938, he was a sailor in the merchant marine, and elements of that experience found their way into several stories. He sold refrigerators door to door. He managed a hotel in Jamaica around 1940–1941, worked in several construction and infrastructure jobs (driving a bulldozer in Puerto Rico, operating a gas station and truck lubrication center, work at a drydock) for the US Army in the early war years, and by 1944 was  an advertising copywriter. In addition to freelance fiction and television writing, in New York City he opened his own literary agency (which was eventually transferred to Scott Meredith), worked for "Fortune" magazine and other Time Inc. properties on circulation, and edited various publications. Sturgeon had somewhat irregular output, frequently suffering from writer's block. Theodore Sturgeon vividly recalled being in the same room with L. Ron Hubbard, when Hubbard became testy with someone there and retorted, "Y'know, we're all wasting our time writing this hack science fiction! You wanta make real money, you gotta start a religion!" Reportedly  Sturgeon also told this story to others. Sturgeon played guitar and wrote music which he sometimes performed at Science Fiction Conventions. Sturgeon was married three times, had two long-term committed relationships outside of marriage, divorced once, and fathered a total of seven children. Sturgeon was a lifelong pipe smoker. His death from lung fibrosis may have been caused by exposure to asbestos during his merchant marine years. Novels. Novelizations. Sturgeon, under his own name, was hired to write novelizations of the following movies based on their scripts (links go to articles about the movies): Short stories. Sturgeon published numerous  short story collections during his lifetime, many drawing on his most prolific writing years of the 1940s and 1950s. Note that some reprints of these titles (especially paperback editions) may cut one or two stories from the line-up. Statistics herein refer to the original editions only. Collections published during Sturgeon's lifetime. The following table includes sixteen volumes (one of them collecting western stories). These are considered "original" collections of Sturgeon material, in that they compiled previously uncollected stories. However, some volumes did contain a few reprinted stories: this list includes books that collected only previously uncollected material, as  well as those volumes that collected "mostly" new material, but also contained up to three stories (representing no more than half the book) that were previously published in a Sturgeon collection. The following six collections consisted entirely of reprints of previously collected material: Complete short stories. North Atlantic Books released the chronologically assembled "The Complete Short Stories of Theodore Sturgeon", edited by Paul Williams. The series consisted of 13 volumes published between 1994 and 2010. Introductions were provided by Harlan Ellison, Samuel R. Delany, Kurt Vonnegut, Gene Wolfe, Connie Willis, Jonathan Lethem, and others. Extensive story notes were provided by  Paul Williams and, in the last two volumes, Sturgeon's daughter Noël. Representative short stories. Sturgeon was best known for his short stories and novellas. The best-known include: