The Ultimate Egoist (2 page)

I have never met Mr. Sturgeon, but his letters have been exploding in my mailbox for some time now, and from several days of theorizing, I see Mr. Sturgeon as a child run off from home on a spring day never to return, to take refuge and nourishment under a bridge, a bright small troll with whisking pen and ink and white paper, listening to the thunder of a timeless world overhead. And this incredulous troll, under his roaring bridge, unable to see the secret world rushing by above, has effected his own concepts of that hidden civilization. It might be 1928 up there, or 2432 or 1979, who knows? Part of his picture is drawn from a life he has guessed with hilarious accuracy from the sounds of the footfalls above, the clickings and talkings of people passing on the high paths; the rest is pure fantasy and invention, a giant carnival distorted but all the more real for its unreality. We see ourselves caught in grotesque gesture, in mid-act.

If you ask for the names of those stories most agreeable to me I would select “Poker Face,”
¹
a tale with a nice, if coincidental, irony and some very humorous writing in it, “Microcosmic God”
¹
for its fascinating generation on generation of Neoterics plus its unself-conscious hero, plus the Breather stories for their screwball antics. I also believe that “It,” partaking of a locale all too often neglected by American writers, will be with us for a good number of years as one of the finest weird tales in the genre.

Some day I hope to meet Sturgeon. I shall take me a walking trip across the midwest and the east, down country roads and along sycamore lanes, stopping by every old stone bridge to listen and look and wait, and perhaps one summer afternoon, in the silence of which such days partake, I shall look down and beneath a shale arch I shall find Mr. Sturgeon busily writing away with pen and ink. It will be hard to find him. For I have not as yet figured out what sort of bridge he prefers, the tall metal soaring architectural bridges like those of Brooklyn and San Francisco, or the little, forgotten, moss-covered creek bridges in home town ravines where mosquitos sing and the silence is green. When I have figured the two halves of his split writing personality I shall start my trek. And if it is night when I come upon some lone bridge somewhere I shall recognize his hiding place
by the pure shining glow of his viscera making a light you can see across the furthest night meadow and hill.

In the meantime, I compliment Mr. Sturgeon by concluding that I still hate him.

T
HOUGH
I
DON
’
T
suppose I met Ted Sturgeon for more than a half dozen times, he is a person of whom I still have very warm memories. I was, of course, familiar with his work long before I made my first visit to the United States in 1952, and he was one of the authors I was most anxious to meet.

Our first encounter is still remarkably clear in my mind. It was at his own home, shared with his wife Marion and their beautiful little son Robin. I can still remember two of the stories he told me. The first is how his stepfather had discovered the precious hoard of science fiction magazines Ted had hidden in the attic, and had carefully reduced all of them to confetti. The job, Ted added, must have taken him hours …

The other incident is more heartwarming, and now that both Ted and Bob Heinlein are gone, I can safely report it. Once, when Ted was even more broke than usual, Bob sent him not only a cheque but something even more valuable—plots for a half dozen good stories. It would be interesting to know which of these Ted was able to use.

I have just realized, rather belatedly, another Sturgeon/Heinlein connection. Ted’s original name was Edward Hamilton
Waldo
—and of course the word Waldo, for a remote-controller, was made famous by Heinlein. (I also wonder if Ted’s amendment of his first two names was made to avoid confusion with the famous “Universe Saver” of the 1930s pulps.)

As I wander back through my memories, the titles of many of
Ted’s stories are appearing in a kind of slow flashback. “Mewhu’s Jet,” though a minor piece, has long intrigued me as a kind of precursor to
E.T
. (For my own involvement in this tangled story, via Satyajit Ray’s never-produced “The Alien,” see the recent
Life & Death of Peter Sellers
.) “The Hurkle Is a Happy Beast” is also one of my favourites—even though I’m a dog- and not a cat-person.

Ted’s stories have an emotional impact unmatched by almost any other writer (though two entirely different examples now come to my mind: Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison). “Thunder and Roses” is a classic example, and I’ve just realized, without the slightest embarrassment, that I used the same theme in “The Last Command.” It must have taken some courage for an editor to publish so downbeat a story during the depths of the Cold War, and I’m sure it must have evoked protests from the “Better Dead than Red” brigade.

For such a gentle and sweet-natured person, Ted had a talent for provoking controversy. Just as “Thunder and Roses” must have infuriated pathological patriots, so “The World Well Lost” enraged incurable homophobes—who, he told me, mailed him lavender-scented letters. And I won’t even mention “Affair with a Green Monkey” or
Some of Your Blood
, which I’m sure he wrote just to see what he could get away with …

Of all Ted’s stories, “The Man Who Lost the Sea” is my favourite, and the one which had the greatest impact on me, for personal as well as literary reasons. I too lost the sea for many years, and only rediscovered it in later life. “Transit of Earth,” which I consider my best story, owes much to Ted’s, even though the treatment is completely different. I feel sure I had Ted’s brilliantly-described skin-diving episode in mind when I incorporated a hair-raising incident from my own career.

“The Man Who Lost the Sea” is a complex, stream-of-consciousness story which may go over the heads of many readers. (Did Ted anticipate the New Wave?) But perseverance will be rewarded. This small masterpiece was anthologized as one of the best short stories of its year, in
any
category—not only science fiction. I can’t even reread it without the skin crawling on the back of my neck.

One final comment: I have just discovered that though Ted’s date
of birth was a year after mine, I’ve already lived a decade longer than he did.

What might he have done …

T
HREE DAYS BEFORE
my fortieth birthday, I was as sick as I have ever been in my life; and on my fortieth birthday Rosemary took me to the doctor, who told her to take me to a hospital. She did, and I was shoved into a wheelchair, wheeled rapidly into the Contagious Disease Ward, and ensconced in a small private room without a door. I had the mumps.

Doctors shot me full of antibiotics, and by the next day I had discovered myself in possession of a television set and a remote control. Ever since TV was a big black box with a tiny screen, I had been working forty-two and a half hours a week and cutting the grass and writing in my spare time; I had never watched daytime TV. That second day in the hospital I did, and it was marvelous. There were soaps and amusing game shows and a rerun of
The Dick Van Dyke Show
at twelve thirty—I still remember the time slot. On the third day I grabbed my remote full of happy anticipation and convalescent optimism.

And it was just the same, with the sole exception of Dick Van Dyke. They might have been rerunning the previous day’s programs, and every ten minutes or so I thought they really were. Rosemary came to visit me, and I begged her to bring me something to read. Anything!

God, it is said, arranges everything for a purpose—and He’s often real mad at us when He does. Rosemary brought me
Sturgeon Is Alive and Well …
, that wonderful, wonderful book.

My eyes have been deteriorating since the sixth grade. My right (good) eye is extremely nearsighted. My left (bad) eye is nearly blind.

When Rosemary had gone, I read Sturgeon until I could no longer see the print, and wept tears of eyestrain. I tried to watch daytime TV instead and wept again, knowing that there were stories of unexampled excellence waiting in the book I held, inaccessible. When I could read again, I read “To Here and the Easel,” “Brownshoes,” and “It’s You!” I read “Jorry’s Gap,” a story I envied Sturgeon so much I felt like chopping him to bits at the end of it. I read “Take Care of Joey,” “Crate,” and “The Girl Who Knew What They Meant,” and when I could read no longer, I calculated the number of words Sturgeon had required to tell “Slow Sculpture.” I have the book before me, and the calculation is in the white space at the end of the story; nine thousand, nine hundred and seventy-five was my final estimate.

I wept, as I have said, and yelled at the crazy old man who wandered into my room every few hours carrying who knows what contagious disease, and tried to shoo away the beautiful little children who came hoping (I hope) that I would read them a story, carrying who knows what contagious diseases and in grave danger of catching mine.

I first met Sturgeon when I was in junior high school. I had fallen and hurt my leg, and for ten days or so my mother drove me to school, returning at three-thirty to bring me home. One afternoon there was a paperback book open on the car seat beside her, the book she had brought to read while she waited for school to let out. I’d seen Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon in the Sunday comics, and knew what the futuristic city on its cover portended; because I often got the mysteries my mother read in job lots when she was through with them, I asked her whether I could have this book—this science fiction book, though I did not know the words then—when she was finished. She told me she didn’t like it much, so I could have it right away.

The first story I read was “Microcosmic God” by Theodore Sturgeon. It has sometimes occurred to me that it has all been downhill from there.

Later, after I discovered the pulps, I read “Killdozer!” three times, beginning each new reading as soon as I finished the previous one;
and though every story I read in those days might as well have carried the byline “A. Grownup,” eventually I began to seek out stories by Sturgeon and few others.

Until at last, when I myself was a published author of science fiction and considered myself an important one, I had dinner with Theodore Sturgeon. You know how the rest of this goes, I’m sure; you know all that I wanted to say, and that I said none of it and pushed my chair back at the end of the meal wishing that someone would chop me to bits.

Still later (only last year, in fact) Joe Mayhew gave me the Sturgeon Project’s pamphlet
Argyll
, containing Sturgeon’s childhood memoir. Both are dead now, Edward Hamilton Waldo and William Dicky “Argyll” Sturgeon, the unhappy stepfather whom Edward Waldo so bitterly hated. Theodore Sturgeon, on the other hand, has only gone away, leaving for us the best part of himself: his love, his wisdom, his mastery of the written word, and his delight in it.

If we weep today, you and I, let it be because they are not ours.

“Y
OU AIN
’
T GOT
much time to talk to him, you know,” said my blue-uniformed guide.

“I know,” I told him. “I’ll cut it short.” I followed him down a gloomy corridor into a room with a large grated window in one wall. In a few minutes Al appeared on the other side of the grating.

“Good grief, Phil,” he said. “I never expected any visitors.”

“Well,” I said, “I’ll never get over the shock of hearing that they had put you in here. Tell me about it.”

“Sure. Remember the trouble I was in? Lola’s hospital bill and the expense of Dad’s funeral and the mortgage? I’d given up hope of ever paying off all my debts. I couldn’t give Lola and the kid the things they should have. And such a little bit would have done it! But throwing luggage around in a baggage car doesn’t pay enough to support a family and bad debts, too.

“When we left Miami with that insured shipment I was nearly batty from trying to figure out a way to get in the clear. And there I was, working in the middle of thousands of dollars’ worth of fancy junk.

“The idea of pulling something never occurred to me, though, until I saw that package for Bernard. I can see that waybill yet: ‘Emil Bernard, Jeweler, New York City. Weight, 11 pounds. Value, $30,000.’ Thirty grand! And suppose it was bit stuff—rings and watches, etc.? To lift a couple of small items would cause plenty of trouble, but I might get by. The package was wrapped in heavy paper and glued with tape and tied with what looked like heavy fishing line. The cord was easy: a bowline at one end to make a loop, three turns around the package and a rolling hitch and two half hitches at the other end. The tape was a tricky proposition, but there was no ink anywhere near it. I wet my handkerchief, rolled it up to the same length as the
tape, laid it on the floor and carefully put the package on it so that the water would soak through. Then I piled half a dozen shipments on top of it.

“I gave that tape time enough to soak, and when we pulled out of Jacksonville I had a look at it, and found it ready to peel. The coast was clear. Carefully I stripped the tape back until finally the edge of the paper appeared. I made short work of the cord and gently unfolded the wrapper.

“Inside were three layers of corrugated pasteboard. They covered a black leatherette case. It was locked. Nothing to do but wrap it up again. I picked up the first piece of pasteboard, to be stopped by a portable typewriter case, or whatever it was. Portable—holy smoke! I had a portable typewriter at home, and the key … I hunted feverishly through my pockets. I found it and stuck it in the keyhole of Bernard’s shipment.