Baby Is Three (57 page)

Sturgeon’s introduction to “Shadow, Shadow on the Wall” in his 1984 collection
Alien Cargo: Good old wicked stepmother; this isn’t the first, and certainly not the last of them to supply us with entertainment. Somebody once made a short film of this; the little boy was just great, the rest misunderstood, so it was never seen. There’s one line in here I’m really proud of: the fury of the woman who, having banished the child to the bedroom, finds him happy as a little clam
. “Don’t you know you’re being punished?”
she shouts. Very heavy, that. Nobody can punish you if you can achieve the mindset that says whatever they’re doing to you isn’t punishment
.

TS’s own childhood experiences with a seemingly sadistic stepparent are recounted in his 1965 memoir
Argyll
(published posthumously).

“The Stars Are the Styx”:
first published in the first issue of
Galaxy Science Fiction
, October 1950. Probably written in summer 1950. It is noteworthy that Theodore Sturgeon contributed stories to the debut issues of both of the magazines that would transform the character of science fiction in the 1950s and beyond:
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
and
Galaxy
, monthly short story magazines that immediately established themselves as the equals of John
W. Campbell’s
Astounding Science-Fiction
in terms of reader popularity and of editorial influence on how authors wrote and what they wrote about and what they considered “science fiction” to be. In both cases, the editors were eager to have a Sturgeon story in their debut issues not only because of his popularity with the genre’s readers but because in different ways the editors of both magazines saw the Sturgeon name as symbolic of the type of science fiction they hoped and intended to offer in their ambitious new publications. And indeed, this turned out to be true. Theodore Sturgeon, already beloved by science fiction readers and other sf writers for the stories he wrote for
Astounding
and its sister magazine
Unknown
in 1939-1947, was in many ways the prototypical science fiction (and fantasy) short story writer of the 1950s (the decade in which he would do his very best work).

“The Stars Are the Styx” was adapted (apparently with scripts by Sturgeon) as a radio drama twice, for “Tales of Tomorrow” (aired Jan. 29, 1953) and for “X Minus One” (aired July 27, 1956). (Sturgeon, whose Star Trek scripts are favorites among aficionados, did his first paying television writing in September 1951 when he adapted Robert Heinlein’s short story “Ordeal in Space” for CBS Stage 14.)

In 1979 Dell Books published a collection of stories by TS called
The Stars Are the Styx
, with a cover by Rowena Morrell depicting Sturgeon as Charon. In his introduction to the title story, TS wrote:

I’ve written elsewhere about the strange way things that I write about seem to happen about fifteen years later. It’s a small thing, but in writing this in 1950 I had no idea in the world that in fifteen years couples would be dancing separately, each more or less doing their own thing. In ’65 they began doing just that. Nor did I dream that this, of all the stories I was writing at the time, would one day be the title story of a collection like this
.

When the narrator in “Stars” asks Judson for a
simple statement
because complicated matters are not important,
he is echoing a codification articulated by other Sturgeon characters in “Quietly” and “What Dead Men Tell” (see Story Notes in Volume V.). And when he guesses people are attracted to Jud because he gives them the feeling he
can be reached … touched … affected … We like feeling that
we have an effect on someone,
it seems likely that the author is examining the happy and mysterious response of strangers when they meet Theodore Sturgeon
.

The line
“Modesty is not so simple a virtue as honesty,” one of the old books says
turns up in an essay by Sturgeon called “The Naked I” (the manuscript is in the Sturgeon papers; date and place of publication uncertain), which begins:

Modesty is not so simple a virtue as honesty
.

I wish I’d said that. Matter of fact, I did and I do and most probably I will, because it’s one of those thoughts you can take home and chew over and find the flavor increasing. The man I got it from, however, is one Bernard Rudofsky, in a long out-of-print book called
Are Clothes Modern?—
which in itself is another such thought
.

I am naked. I am naked now as I sit here writing this. I wear clothes as seldom as possible because I am more comfortable that way. I wear clothes a) when I must and b) when I want to, and at no other time
.

Amongst the Sturgeon papers are several notes in which TS attempts to plot a sequel to “The Stars Are the Styx.” For example:

Charon decides to go Out. When he gets there he finds that in the first place none of the Outbounders are wanted; second, that the great synapse is equally unwanted and useless to a really hidebound Earth. He goes back to Curbstone and finds ancient papers which describe the whole scheme as a riddance for neurotics and potential rebels
.

Lucy Menger in her 1981 book
Theodore Sturgeon
points out that: “The idea that misfits can contribute to society is central to ‘The Stars Are the Styx.’ In this story, Sturgeon capsulizes his thoughts on misfits when his narrator muses: ‘When you come right down to it, misfits are that way either because they lack something or because they have something
extra
.’ ”

Editor’s blurb from the first page of the original magazine appearance: ON CURBSTONE, GOING OUT MEANT A 6,000 YEAR DATE!

“Rule of Three”:
first published in
Galaxy Science Fiction
, January 1951. Written October 1950. Among the papers belonging to Sturgeon’s
estate is a letter on
Time
letterhead dated Oct. 11. The year must be 1950 (because TS wasn’t writing for Horace Gold’s
Galaxy
in Oct. ’49 and didn’t sell him a story in fall ’51). There is no salutation; the person he’s writing to could be either his estranged wife Mary Mair or the young woman who would become his third wife the following year, Marion McGahan. The letter is signed and not a carbon, so presumably was not delivered (anyway, it was still among Sturgeon’s papers when he died three decades later). The letter is relevant here because I am certain the story TS has just shown to Horace and is planning to rewrite all day tomorrow is “Rule of Three.” (See notes on “Make Room for Me” for info about “the other one.”) So here is the entire text of a note written by TS in the midst of working on “Rule of Three” (which I regard as one of his major works and arguably as important a message-in-a-bottle-from-outer-space as we humans may ever receive):

I haven’t seen you in
so
long …
[ellipses in original]
I was half out of my mind with exhaustion when I spoke to you the other night—about 4 hours sleep in 48. I can’t take too much of that, but I had to
.

Horace liked the story but wants a rewrite. He’s right, damn him. He’s also very impressed with the other one I told you about—the one I wrote with someone else—particularly since it has a new year’s eve sequence and is ideal for his December issue. So I’ve got to rewrite that one too. The way I hope to handle it is this: Tomorrow I’ll stay home and work all day, finishing the 9000-worder. (Tonight, by the way, I’m lecturing at CCNY.) Friday evening I’ve got a dianetic emergency to handle—his third session, which I think will straighten him out. Saturday I’ll work on the 13,000-word one. After that I hope to be able to see you, if I can’t snatch a couple of hours between times
.

Hold tight, darling, and be careful of the door
.

(The letter is signed,
Love, Ted
.)

Sturgeon’s 1979 introduction to “Rule of Three”:
My preoccupation for some time has been with the nature of marriage, and whether or not we haven’t gotten ourselves off on the wrong foot. Divorce statistics would seem to indicate that there is nothing more
destructive of marriage than monogamy. “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment,” wrote Elizabeth Barrett (a monogamist if there ever was one), but she had a point there. Although the person who wrote “Rule of Three” clearly regarded the desirability of monogamy as axiomatic, the astute reader—another term for postgame quarterbacking—might find in it the seeds of later ideation. One tends to work out one’s own convictions in writing fiction—especially in science fiction—and to test them against possibilities, however untimely or unformed or wishful or improbable. Anyway, in this story (1951) one may find what is possibly the first suggestion in science fiction that love may not after all be confined to gender or to monogamy. Here are the seeds of later work like
More Than Human,
and the growing concept that perhaps, after all, the greatest advance we can make is to accept what we are, and then to grok, to blesh, to meld, to join. Real science fiction talk, that, ain’t it?

In his 1953 magazine article “Why So Much Syzygy?” TS wrote:
What I have been trying to do all these years is investigate this matter of love, sexual and asexual … To do this I’ve had to look at the individual components … In “Rule of Three” and “Synthesis”
[“Make Room for Me”]
I had (in reverse order) a quasi-sexual relationship among three people, and one among six so it could break down into three couples and be normal. In “The Stars Are the Styx” I set up several (four, as I remember) different kinds of love motivations for mutual comparisons
.

Magazine blurb: OF COURSE YOU’D BE HOST TO GUESTS FROM OUTER SPACE; IT’S COMMON COURTESY. BUT BEING A HOST CAN HAVE A PARTICULARLY NASTY MEANING!

“Make Room for Me”:
first published in
Fantastic Adventures
, May 1951. Originally written in 1946 in collaboration with Rita Dragonette. Apparently rewritten—see Oct. 11, 1950 letter quoted in “Rule of Three” note—in October 1950. Regarding that letter, “Make Room for Me” does indeed include a New Year’s Eve sequence and is therefore surely the “other” story referred to. This letter is the only place I know of where Sturgeon acknowledges that the story
was co-written
(the one I wrote with someone else)
. In 1976 I interviewed Rita Dragonette; she told me that she and Ted wrote “Make Room for Me” together early in 1946 when the two of them, who had been friends in high school in Philadelphia, were living together in New York City. She said they completed a version then, but… “I never saw it again until Phil Klass came to me and said, ‘Look at this,’ and there it was in print. Under Sturgeon’s name. And he thought he could make it all right by giving me a check …” Dragonette’s contribution to the story was not mentioned when the story was included in the collection
Sturgeon in Orbit
in 1964.

The three characters in the story—which must have been called “Synthesis” at one time, judging from Sturgeon’s mention of it under that name in his 1953 article—are caricatures of Rita (Vaughn), Ted (Dran Hamilton) and their high school pal Manny Staub (Manuel). Rita (a published poet under the name Ree Dragonette) told me that she and Manny and Ted had “talked about these things in high school—the trinity, the three of us, about the need to coalesce, to be re-embodied … Some of the conversations [in the story] were verbatim.”

In a 1978 interview with Larry Duncan, TS said,
I think that the greatest piece of music that I know of is Bach’s
Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor. In 1975, he told Paul Williams:
I have one or two
real
long-term friends. A man called Manny Staub has been my close friend ever since high school … he left high school to join the Marines, and was decorated for bravery in action, in China, long before World War Two. He was blown off his bicycle by a bomb one time
. [In high school]
we went to movies together, we used to walk all over Philadelphia, we made all the museums and we went to concerts … I think we had a rather profound effect on one another
.

In his 1964 introduction to this story (chiefly about the magazine editor who published it in 1951), Sturgeon said:
Howard Browne bought this one, because, he said, he liked it. He must have found it a refuge from what he was doing at the time, for it is a strange and filmy kind of effort, whereas Howard was writing … a series of hard-heel detective novels …

“Special Aptitude”:
first published under the title “Last Laugh” in
Other Worlds
, March 1951.

Theodore Sturgeon to Paul Williams, December 1975:
I became a cadet in the Penn State Nautical School when I was seventeen … It was a terrible experience. The fourth class, which is the youngest, were absolutely brutalized and enslaved by the others.… The fourth class had to line up, put on their dungarees upside down and backwards, stand at attention … They would come along and they would fill your mouth with rock salt; or they’d say, “take a seat.” “Take a seat” meant, go into a half-squat, with your arms stretched out in front of you, and stay that way till you collapse. It was absolutely brutal, the indignities, they’d open your mail and read it aloud in the mess hall
. Sturgeon recalled with horror that the officers
watched these shit sessions and did nothing to stop it
.

Editor’s blurb from the first page of the original magazine appearance: THERE WAS NOTHING SO TERRIBLE AS THE GABBLERS. HUMAN EARS COULD NOT WITHSTAND THEIR HORRID UPROAR—AND DEATH TO ALL COMERS GLARED FROM THEIR EYES.

“The Traveling Crag”:
first published in
Fantastic Adventures
, July 1951.

Sturgeon’s introduction to this story in
Alien Cargo
(1984):
For years I have felt that this is one of the worst stories I ever wrote. A lot of people have said they think otherwise, so here it is
.

TS had worked as a literary agent himself for other science fiction writers, including William Tenn and A. Bertram Chandler, throughout 1946.