THEODORE STURGEON authored numerous science fiction and fantasy novels and short
stories, among them, *More Than Human*, recipient of the International Fantasy
Award, and "Slow Sculpture," winner of Hugo and Nebula Awards.
Shortly after his death, he was given the Life Achievement Award at the World
Fantasy Awards. He was born in
THEODORE STURGEON wrote two of the seventy-nine episodes of The Original STAR TREK TV series:
"Shore Leave" [#17 from 1966 First Season] Alice In Wonderland is a character on a fantasy planet where the crew vacations.
"Amok Time" [#34 from 1967 Second Season] Spock goes through the Vulcan mating cycle, "pon farr" as he must return to his home planet Vulcan and *mate, or die*. This episode that opened the second season shows Spock in an orgasmic eyeball roll as he goes deep into "Plak-tow", the *Blood Fever*. This episode has the first time we hear the motto "Live Long and Prosper" and the first time we see the Nimoy-invented Vulcan greeting (palm forward with fingers spread in a *V* between the middle and ring fingers).
STURGEON'S LAW: "Ninety percent of everything is crap." It is derived from a quote by science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, who once said, "Sure, ninety percent of science fiction is crud. That's because ninety percent of everything is crud." When Sturgeon's Law is cited, the final word is usually changed to "crap".
Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead by Phil Lesh (Little, Brown April 2005)
Excerpt from the book by Grateful Dead Bass Player Phil Lesh:
The unique organicity of our music reflects the fact that each of us consciously personalized his playing: to fit with what others were playing and to fit with who each man was as an individual, allowing us to meld our consciousnesses together in the unity of a group mind.
For us, the philosophical basis of this concept was articulated by the science-fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon in his novel More Than Human, wherein the protagonists each have a single paranormal talent – telepathy, psychokinesis, teleportation – and are joined by a quadruple paraplegic who acts as a central processing unit. The process by which they become one is called bleshing, from a combination of mesh and blend. (Today’s archetype would be the X-Men.)
From Forward written by THEODORE STURGEON to his 1971 collection of short stories titled "Sturgeon Is Alive And Well..."
"Yes. I am alive and well."
"Once to a perceptive friend I was bemoaning the fact that there was a gap in my bibliography from 1940 to 1946. (Actually some stories were published during that period, but only one had been written after 1940.) What wonders I might have produced had I not been clutched up, I wailed. And he said no, be of good cheer. He then turned on the whole body of my work a kind of searchlight I had not been able to use, and pointed out to me that the early stuff was all very well, but the stories were essentially entertainments; with few exceptions they lacked that Something to Say quality which marked the later output. In other words, the retreat, the period of silence, was in no way a cessation, a stopping. It was a silent working out of ideas, of conviction, of profound selection. The fact that the process went on unrecognized and beyond or beneath my control is quite beside the point. The work never stopped."
"I've held hard to that revelation in recent years, and no longer go into transports of anguish when the typewriter stops. I do other things instead, in absolute confidence that when that silent subterranean work is done, it will surface. When it does so, it does with blinding speed - a short story, sometimes, in two hours. But to say I wrote it in two hours is to overlook that complex, steady, silent processing and reprocessing that has been going on for months and often years. Say then that I typed it in two hours. I do not know how long it took to write. I could only type it when it was finished."
The final novel by THEODORE STURGEON titled Godbody was published in 1986 with an Introduction by Robert A. Heinlein [an excerpt of which follows]:
GODBODY -
"The Last of the Wine."
And the best.
Sometimes (not often) the last work of an artist, published after his death, is the capstone of his art, summing up what he had been telling the world all his life. In writing *Godbody* Theodore Sturgeon achieved his crowning statement.
Again and again for half a century he has given us one message. In *Godbody* he tells us still again, and even more emphatically, the same timeless message that runs through all his writings and through all his living acts - a message that was ancient before he was born but which he made his own, then spoke it and sang it and shouted it and sometimes scolded us with it:
"Love one another."
Simple. Ancient. Difficult.
Seldom attained.
Mark Twain said that the difference between the right word and almost the right word was the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
Sturgeon did not deal in lightning bugs.
*Godbody* - Forget about art and enjoy it.
Some readers will feel that it is XXX-rated pornography. They will have plenty to go on. Others will see it as a tender, gentle love story. They'll be right.
Many will find it offensively coarse in language (people of my generation, especially). It does contain every one of the "seven words that must never be used on television," plus four or five more that can't be used but never got on the verboten list.
Others will see that Ted has always used the exact word - always "lightning," never "lightning bug." Those four-letter shockers are essential.
Some will complain that *Godbody* is loaded with sex and violence.
Others may answer that "Hamlet" ("Romeo and Juliet," the Old Testament, *Le Morte d'Arthur*) is nothing but sex and violence.
Some will denounce *Godbody* as baldly sacrilegious. They'll be right.
Some will see it as tenderly and beautifully reverent. And they will be right.
Others will say, "Yes it's a great story. But why did he have to stick so much nudity into it?"
I'll answer that one myself, since it is too late to ask Sturgeon. God must love skin since he makes so much of it. Covering it with cloth or leather or fur in the name of "decency" is a vice thought up by dirty old men; don't blame it on God.
Never mind what anyone says about this book. Read it, enjoy it, reread it, give it to someone you love. It is our last love letter from a man who loves all of us. Make the most of it today. Then keep it for a day when you are downhearted and need what it gives you.
And don't be afraid to love.
[Robert A. Heinlein - September, 1985]
MORE THAN HUMAN
The 1953 novel *More Than Human* is the best known work by Theodore Sturgeon. It is divided into three parts:
"The Fabulous Idiot" and "Baby Is Three" and "Morality".
Five extraordinary individuals, drawn to each other by loneliness and something more - a need for "completion"...
Janie: a neglected, unloved, intelligent, little girl, gifted or cursed with an adult's understanding - and telepathic/telekinetic powers of unbelievable magnitude.
Bonnie and Beanie: twin sisters who can teleport themselves anywhere in the blink of an eye ... shy, playful, mischievous children in need of a firm guiding hand.
Baby: a mongoloid infant whose body never matures, but whose computer-like brain is constantly expanding, absorbing data at a lightning-fast pace and answering incredibly difficult questions via his own specially devised communications system.
Gerry: orphan, street urchin, delinquent ... an angry young boy capable of "taking" facts and memories from anyone's mind, "making" other people do exactly what he wants them to do - by simply getting them to look into his eyes ...
Together they "blesh", losing their separate identities. Together, they were more than human. And as they merge into a single being, only one is aware that some part of this new Self is missing - a part so vital that, without it, "Homo sapiens" will be destroyed ...
Startling, stunning, as chilling as it is unforgettable, MORE THAN HUMAN is the story of a strange metamorphosis - as only THEODORE STURGEON could conceive it.
SCI FI RELIGION: L. Ron Hubbard was a science fiction writer who met regularly with a group of other science fiction writers that included Theodore Sturgeon. He told Theodore Sturgeon that nobody would get rich writing science fiction. L. Ron Hubbard said the only way to become wealthy was to start a religion.
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