Thunder and Roses

T
HEODORE
H
AMILTON
S
TURGEON
was born February 26, 1918, and died May 8, 1985. This is the fourth of a series of volumes that will collect all of his short fiction of all types and all lengths shorter than a novel. The volumes and the stories within the volumes are organized chronologically by order of composition (insofar as it can be determined). This fourth volume contains stories written between early 1946 and the end of 1947. One is being published here for the first time; and three others have never before appeared in a Sturgeon collection.

Preparation of each of these volumes would not be possible without the hard work and invaluable participation of Noël Sturgeon, Debbie Notkin, and our publishers, Lindy Hough and Richard Grossinger. I would also like to thank, for their significant assistance with this volume, James Gunn, the Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust, Marion Sturgeon, Jayne Williams, Dorothe Tunstall, Ralph Vicinanza, Kyle McAbee, Judith Merril, Faren Miller, Tom Whitmore, Angus MacDonald, Paula Morrison, Catherine Campaigne, T. V. Reed, Cindy Lee Berryhill, and all of you who have expressed your interest and support.

I
MET
T
ED
Sturgeon because an editor called me. I had received letters from editors about my manuscripts, a couple of rejections and then a life-changing acceptance from Sam Merwin, Jr., but one day my telephone rang and a voice said, “This is Horace Gold calling from
Galaxy
.”

It was the fall of 1950. I was a graduate student at the University of Kansas, completing a master’s degree in English, and I had been writing science fiction since 1948. I had gone back to graduate school under the G.I. Bill in the summer of 1949, after a year of freelancing in which I discovered that I could write and sell stories, though not fast enough to make a living at it. But I continued to write stories as a graduate student, and I had talked the English department into letting me write a science-fiction play called “Breaking Point” for academic credit. I had turned that into a novella. John Campbell rejected it at
Astounding
, and I sent it off to a new magazine whose first issue had just come out. It had attracted my attention by the variety of stories it was publishing and the skillful way they were written. It was called
Galaxy
.

I had published two stories in 1949, two so far in 1950, including one in what had been my favorite magazine for a dozen years,
Astounding
, and I would publish four more in 1951. It was enough to make me the envy of other graduate students, who had yet to be published, but I had made no particular impression on the science-fiction community. Now Horace Gold was calling. What he had to say could make a difference.

“I’d like to buy your story ‘Breaking Point,’ ” Gold said, “but it’s too long.”

“I’ll cut it,” I said quickly. I knew the process of translating a play into fiction had left the story overburdened with dialogue.

“I don’t trust you to do it,” Gold said bluntly. He was either blunt or charming. “And I need it done in a hurry. Would you let Ted Sturgeon cut it by a third?”

I agreed without hesitation, even after I learned that Gold intended to compensate Sturgeon by giving him one cent a word of my three-cents-a-word payment. It still would be the longest story I had ever sold, and for more money than I had ever earned from writing, and Ted Sturgeon was a writer that I had admired, extravagantly, since I had become aware that particular kinds of stories were written by particular authors. I liked Asimov and Heinlein and van Vogt and De Camp and Simak for various reasons, often different, but Sturgeon’s work was special. His offbeat characters were more believable and his prose was more carefully wrought. He was a writer’s writer.

I recognized Sturgeon’s touch in such early stories as “Ether Breather,” “Microcosmic God,” “Memorial,” “Maturity,” “Mewhu’s Jet,” and “Thunder and Roses” in
Astounding
and in “The Sky Was Full of Ships” in
Thrilling Wonder Stories
. When I occasionally came across a copy of
Astounding
’s sister fantasy magazine,
Unknown
, I found that special Sturgeon quality in “It,” “The Ultimate Egoist,” “Shottle Bop,” “Yesterday Was Monday” and others. But I had missed out on a lot of magazines during World War II, and Sturgeon’s work may have made the greatest impression when I saw the anthologies that began to appear after the war: “A God in a Garden” actually appeared in 1939, in Phil Stong’s pioneer anthology
The Other Worlds
, but there was “Killdozer!” in Groff Conklin’s
The Best of Science Fiction
and “Minority Report” in August Derleth’s
Beyond Time and Space
.

Then Sturgeon’s first novel,
The Dreaming Jewels
, was published in the February 1950 issue of
Fantastic Adventures
. The great short-story artist could write novels, too, I discovered, although to the end of his days he was at his best in the shorter lengths.

As a matter of fact Sturgeon had had a novelette, “The Stars Are the Styx,” in the first issue of
Galaxy
. I waited anxiously to hear from
Sturgeon or Gold about “Breaking Point.” I kept looking at issues of
Galaxy
as they came out, and at its forecasts for what would be published in the next issue, thinking that maybe my novella was going to get published without my being notified, or paid. I may have written to Sturgeon, finally; I remember a letter from Sturgeon telling me that he had put off working on the project for several months, and when he had got around to it Gold said he didn’t want the story cut, he wanted it rewritten.

That might have been the end of it, but it wasn’t: Lester del Rey published “Breaking Point” in the March 1953 issue of
Space Science Fiction
, and Piers Anthony wrote me a couple of decades later that reading it had made him realize that it was possible to write stories like that and get them published. It also was the title story for my 1972 collection. By the time “Breaking Point” was published, however, I had attended my first World Science Fiction Convention and I had met Sturgeon. He wasn’t at the convention, but my agent was. My agent was Fred Pohl. Gold, who had disappointed me about my story, had recommended me to Fred. I had earned my degree and was working as an editor in Racine, Wisconsin, but I had continued to write and send stories to Fred. I also had persuaded my employers to send me to the convention in Chicago, had my first experience of meeting other writers and science-fiction enthusiasts, and talked with Fred, who told me he had just sold four stories for me. One of them, incidentally, was to
Galaxy
, “The Misogynist.”