“Killdozer!” was first published in the November 1944 issue of Astounding.  There are two versions of this novella. It was revised when it was reprinted in Sturgeon’s collection Aliens 4.  The revised version is currently available in Killdozer!: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon Volume 3 and in Selected Stories. I’m not sure if the original is currently available. I don’t know what the differences are, and I’m not going to compare the two versions.

I originally read “Killdozer!” in Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories 6.  I think it’s the original version. Asimov and Greenberg tended to reprint the original versions of any stories that had undergone later revision.  That was what I reread it in for this post. As I’ve written before, The Great Sf Stories and Ballantine’s Best of series were formative reading experiences for me. I’ve found many of my favorites, both authors and stories, in their pages. A number of the works I first encountered there I’ve reread multiple times over the years.

But not “Killdozer!” Part of that is its length. But I also had a general recollection that the story was long and slow and not typical of the majority of Sturgeon’s work from this period.

So when I reread it for the first time in [REDACTED] years, I came to it with an open mind. At least I tried to. I’m not the same person I was as a teenager (for which we thank God). And I can say, after reading it as a geezer mature adult, it’s definitely long and slow and probably not typical of the best of Sturgeon’s work during this period.

That isn’t to say it’s bad, or that I didn’t enjoy reading it. I did. Just not as much as some of the other stories on the Retro Hugo ballot.

The plot is pretty simple. A group of men are left alone on an isolated island in the Pacific for two weeks during WWII to build an airstrip.There are the ruins of a structure up on a bluff.  Unbeknownst to them, an alien entity is imprisoned in the ruins, and that entity takes possession of the most advanced bulldozer on the island and goes on a killing spree.

Theodore Sturgeon thinking up his famous law.

Sturgeon had experience with this type of heavy equipment, and it shows. This is the main issue I have with the story. Sturgeon includes a great deal of detail about how a bulldozer works and all the things that go into driving them. While it does add a great deal of verisimilitude, it gets to be a bit much at times. It doesn’t quite rise to the level of I’ve Suffered For My Art And Now It’s Your Turn. But unless you have a good working knowledge of heavy equipment circa the early 1940s, there will be places where the jargon gets in the way of the story. YMMV.

Sturgeon does an excellent job of describing the men and making them individuals, which is no mean feat considering that most of them don’t live that long. There are a couple of passive-aggressive trouble makers who only make the situation worse for the level-headed ones who are trying to keep everyone alive.

Overall a good story, one in which Sturgeon’s strengths in creating characters overcomes the excessive attention to detail.