Today is February 26. It is the birthday of Theodore Sturgeon (1918-1985). The title of this post is a play on the title of his 1958 collection, A Touch of Strange.
Sturgeon was primarily a short story writer. He began publshing short fiction in 1939. He quickly began selling to the two major markets of the day, Unkown and Astounding. In later years he suffered from writer’s block, and his produc tivity dropped off after his first couple of decades, although he never completely stopped writing. His complete chort fiction was collected in thirteen volumes.
I personally prefer his early stories, but that’s partly because those were in print and available when I first started reading science fiction and fantasy.
Sturgeon only wrote a handful of novels, and not all of them were fantasy or science fiction. Some of Your Blood is a nonsupernatural horror story. The Player on the Other Side is an Ellery Queen novel.
Sturgeon was noted for the humanity fo his characters. Unlike other writers who tended to write characters who were flat and interchangeable, such as Isaac Asimov, Sturgeon’s characters had warmth and depth. He also tended to focus on characters who didn’t always fit into society.
Some of my personal favorites are “It”, “Shottle Bop”, and “Cargo” as well as Some of Your Blood.
What are your favorite Sturgeon stories?
I stumbled across “Shottle Bop” in Basil Davenport’s anthology “Invisible Men,” which I found in a used store on vacation in the mid 70s. Reading it now takes me back fifty years. Twenty years later when I was a deliveryman I kept a Sturgeon paperback in the truck to read a story while waiting on customers. What’s that? Do I have a favorite? I’ll get back to you on that…
Oh, and I heard an excellent adaption of his “A Saucer Of Loneliness” on an old “X-Minus One” on sattelite radio the other day.
I’ll have to look for that one.
X-Minus One adn Dimension X had some great adaptations.