More Than Human (23 page)

Authors: Theodore Sturgeon

BOOK: More Than Human

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Theodore Sturgeon was born on February 26, 1918 as Edward Hamilton Waldo. His name was later changed to Theodore Hamilton Sturgeon when he was adopted by his stepfather. He died in Eugene, Oregon, on May 8, 1985, of lung fibrosis. A resident of New York City, Jamaica, Woodstock (N.Y.), and Los Angeles, he was the author of more than thirty novels and short story collections. He also had seven children.

An influential member of the cohort of science fiction writers that included Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein, Sturgeon has been widely credited with introducing an emphasis on literary style and human, social concerns to science fiction in the fifties. He authored two
Star Trek
episodes,
Shore Leave
and
Amok Time,
the latter an important source of Vulcan lore. His stories have been made into television episodes, short films, theatrical productions and radio plays.

His novel,
More Than Human,
won the International Fantasy Award, and has been continuously in print since its publication in 1953. Its primary idea, that a group of people with varied skills can function as a gestalt being, was very influential in the counterculture in the 60s, especially with musicians and artists such as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and the Grateful Dead. Sturgeon's short story, "Slow Sculpture," won the Hugo and Nebula awards; the story, "The Man Who Lost the Sea," won the Martha Foley award; and the story, "The World Well Lost," won a Galactic Network Spectrum Hall of Fame award.

In 2000, Sturgeon was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. He was dedicated to supporting young writers, and taught for many years at the Clarion Writing Workshops and in other university settings; his students included Stephen King and Octavia Butler.

The Sturgeon Award for short fiction was established upon his death, and has become an important marker of excellence for new and established writers. Sturgeon's Complete Stories are being published by North Atlantic Press; Volume 8,
Bright Segment,
will be published in Spring 2001.

He is also known in popular culture for Sturgeon's Law ("90 percent of everything is crap"), which appears in the Macintosh Bible, and was originally meant to counter the marginalization of science fiction as a lesser literary genre. The motto by which he lived was "ask the next question," and he was resolutely on the side of human freedom over authoritarianism, love over violence, creativity over conformity, and cooperation over competition.

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MORE THAN HUMAN