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{{
{{Use mdy dates|date=January 2024}}
{{use American English|date=January 2024}}
{{Infobox writer <!-- For more information see [[:Template:Infobox Writer/doc]]. -->
| name = Theodore Sturgeon
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| birth_name = Edward Hamilton Waldo
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1918|02|26}}
| birth_place = [[
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1985|5|8|1918|02|26}}
| death_place = [[Eugene, Oregon]], U.S.
| resting_place =
| occupation = {{hlist|Fiction writer
| language =
| citizenship =
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| alma_mater =
| period = 1938–1985
| genre = {{hlist|[[Science fiction]]
| subject = Science fiction (as critic)
| movement =
| notableworks = {{
* ''[[More Than Human]]''
* "[[Microcosmic God]]"
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| children =
| relatives =
| awards = {{hlist|[[Hugo Award|Hugo]]
| signature =
| signature_alt =
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}}
[[File:Weird Tales November 1948.jpg|thumb|right|Sturgeon's "The Perfect Host" was the cover story in the November 1948 ''Weird Tales'']]
[[File:Fantastic adventures 195002.jpg|thumb|right|An early version of Sturgeon's first novel,
[[File:Planet stories 195109.jpg|thumb|right|Sturgeon's novella
[[File:Galaxy 195405.jpg|thumb|right|Sturgeon's novella
'''Theodore Sturgeon''' ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|s|t|ɜr|dʒ|ən}}; born '''Edward Hamilton Waldo''', February 26, 1918 – May 8, 1985) was an American fiction author of primarily [[fantasy fiction|fantasy]], [[science fiction]], and [[Horror fiction|horror]], as well as a critic. He wrote approximately 400 reviews and more than 120 short stories, 11 novels, and several scripts for ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]''.<ref name=isfdb/>
Sturgeon's science fiction novel ''[[More Than Human]]'' (1953) won the 1954 [[International Fantasy Award]] (for SF and fantasy) as the year's best novel, and the [[Science Fiction Writers of America]] ranked "[[Baby Is Three]]" number five among the "[[The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two|Greatest Science Fiction Novellas of All Time]]" to 1964. Ranked by votes for all of their pre-1965 novellas, Sturgeon was [[The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two#Authors|second among authors]], behind [[Robert Heinlein]].<!-- source is our linked book article -->
An overview of his work by science fiction critic [[Sam Moskowitz]] can be found in the collective biography ''[[Seekers of Tomorrow]]''.<ref>Moskowitz, Samuel. [[iarchive:seekersoftomorro00mosk/page/229/mode/2up|''Seekers of Tomorrow: Masters of Modern Science Fiction'']]. Westport, Connecticut: Hyperion Press, 1974. Print. Pages 229-248.</ref>
The [[Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame]] inducted Sturgeon in 2000, its fifth class of two dead and two living writers.<ref name=sfhof-old/>▼
▲The [[Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame]] inducted Sturgeon in 2000, its fifth class of two dead and two living writers.<ref name="sfhof-old" />
==Biography==▼
▲==Biography==
Sturgeon was born Edward Hamilton Waldo in [[Staten Island, New York]], in 1918. His name was legally changed to Theodore Sturgeon at age eleven after his mother's divorce and
He sold his first story, "Heavy Insurance," in 1938 to the [[McClure Syndicate]], which bought much of his early work. It appeared in the ''Milwaukee Journal'' on July 16th. At first he wrote mainly short stories, primarily for genre magazines such as ''[[Astounding]]'' and ''[[Unknown magazine|Unknown]]'', but also for general-interest publications such as ''[[Argosy Magazine]]''. He used the [[pen name]] "E. Waldo Hunter" when two of his stories ran in the same issue of ''Astounding''. A few of his early stories were signed "Theodore H. Sturgeon
Sturgeon [[ghost-writer|ghost-wrote]] one [[Ellery Queen]] [[Mystery (fiction)|mystery]] novel, ''The Player on the Other Side'' (Random House, 1963). This novel was praised by critic [[H. R. F. Keating]]: "[I] had almost finished writing ''Crime and Mystery:
Disliking arguments with [[John W. Campbell]] over editorial decisions, after 1950 Sturgeon only published one story in ''Astounding''.<ref name="latham2009">{{Cite book |title=The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction |last=Latham |first=Rob |publisher=Routledge |year=2009 |isbn=9781135228361 |editor-last=Bould |editor-first=Mark |pages=80–89 |chapter=Fiction, 1950-1963 |editor-last2=Butler |editor-first2=Andrew M. |editor-last3=Roberts |editor-first3=Adam |editor-last4=Vint |editor-first4=Sherryl |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=y7CNAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA80 |access-date=2020-10-20 |archive-date=2024-01-05 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240105045255/https://books.google.com/books?id=y7CNAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA80#v=onepage&q&f=false |url-status=live }}</ref> Sturgeon wrote the screenplays for the ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]'' episodes "[[Shore Leave (Star Trek)|Shore Leave]]" (1966) and "[[Amok Time]]" (1967, written up and published as a [[Bantam Books]] "Star Trek Fotonovel" in 1978).<ref name=isfdb/> The latter featured the first appearance of [[pon farr]], the [[Vulcan (Star Trek)|Vulcan]] mating ritual, the sentence "Live long and prosper"<ref name=IAS_67>Nimoy (1995), p. 67.</ref> and the [[Vulcan salute|Vulcan hand symbol]]. Sturgeon also wrote several ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series|Star Trek]]'' scripts that were never produced. One of these first introduced the [[Prime Directive]].
He also wrote an episode of the Saturday morning show ''[[Land of the Lost (1974 TV series)|Land of the Lost]]'', "[[The Pylon Express]]", in 1975. Two of Sturgeon's stories were adapted for ''[[The
Sturgeon published the "first stories in science fiction which dealt with homosexuality, '[[The World Well Lost]]' [June 1953] and 'Affair
Though not as well known to the general public as contemporaries like [[Isaac Asimov]] or [[Ray Bradbury]], Sturgeon is well known among readers of mid-20th-century science fiction anthologies. At the height of his popularity in the 1950s he was the most anthologized English-language author alive.<ref name="Engel_1994">
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| date = November 1, 1998
| quote = Veteran science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon, reportedly the most anthologized science fiction writer of all time, wrote the teleplay adaptation of his own short story for the ABC-TV movie ''Killdozer'' (1974).
}}</ref> Three Sturgeon stories were adapted for the 1950s NBC radio anthology ''[[X Minus One]]'': "[[A Saucer of Loneliness]]" (broadcast twice}, "The Stars Are
[[Carl Sagan]] described "To Here and the Easel" as "a stunning portrait of personality disassociation as perceived from the inside", and further said that many of Sturgeon's works were among the "rare few science‐fiction novels [that] combine a standard science‐fiction theme with a deep human sensitivity".<ref name="sagan19780528">{{Cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1978/05/28/archives/growing-up-with.html |title=Growing up with Science Fiction |last=Sagan |first=Carl |date=1978-05-28 |work=The New York Times |access-date=2018-12-12 |page=SM7 |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331 |archive-date=2018-12-11 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181211180058/https://www.nytimes.com/1978/05/28/archives/growing-up-with.html |url-status=live }}</ref> [[John Clute]] wrote in ''[[The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction]]'': "His influence upon writers like [[Harlan Ellison]] and [[Samuel R. Delany]] was seminal, and in his life and work he was a powerful and generally liberating influence in post-WWII US sf". He won comparatively few genre awards. (One was the [[World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement]] from the 1985 World Fantasy Convention.)<ref name=SFAwards/>
Sturgeon's original novels were all published between 1950 and 1961, and the bulk of his short story work dated from the 1940s and 1950s. Though he continued to write through 1983, his work rate dipped noticeably in the later years of his life; a 1971 story collection entitled ''Sturgeon Is Alive
He was a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the [[Trap Door Spiders]], which served as the basis of [[Isaac Asimov]]'s fictional group of mystery solvers the [[Black Widowers]]. Sturgeon was the inspiration for the recurrent character of [[Kilgore Trout]] in the novels of [[
==Sturgeon's Law==
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: "Ninety percent of [science fiction] is crud, but then, ninety percent of ''everything'' is crud."
This was originally known as ''Sturgeon's Revelation''; Sturgeon has said that "Sturgeon's Law" was originally
: "Nothing is always absolutely so."{{Cn|date=June 2023}}
However, the former statement is now widely referred to as Sturgeon's Law. He is also known for his dedication to a credo of critical thinking that challenged all normative assumptions: "Ask the next question." He represented this credo by the symbol of a Q with an arrow through it, an example of which he wore around his neck and used as part of his signature in the last 15 years of his life.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://physics.emory.edu/faculty/weeks/misc/duncan.html |title=The Push from Within: The Extrapolative Ability of Theodore Sturgeon}}</ref>
==Life and family==
Theodore's birth father, Edward Waldo, was a color and dye manufacturer of middling success. With his second wife, Anne, he had one daughter, Joan. Theodore's mother, Christine Hamilton Dicker (Waldo) Sturgeon, was a well-educated writer, watercolorist, and poet who published journalism, poetry, and fiction under the name Felix Sturgeon. His stepfather, William Dickie Sturgeon (sometimes known as Argyll), was a mathematics teacher at a prep school and then Romance Languages Professor at Drexel Institute
▲Theodore's birth father, Edward Waldo, was a color and dye manufacturer of middling success. With his second wife, Anne, he had one daughter, Joan. Theodore's mother, Christine Hamilton Dicker (Waldo) Sturgeon, was a well-educated writer, watercolorist, and poet who published journalism, poetry, and fiction under the name Felix Sturgeon. His stepfather, William Dickie Sturgeon (sometimes known as Argyll), was a mathematics teacher at a prep school and then Romance Languages Professor at Drexel Institute [later [[Drexel Institute of Technology]]] in Philadelphia. Sturgeon's account of his stepfather is included in a posthumous memoir.<ref name="Argyll">Sturgeon, Theodore (1993). ''Argyll; A Memoir'', Entwhistle Books. {{ISBN|978-0934558167}}</ref> Sturgeon's sibling, [[Peter A. Sturgeon|Peter Sturgeon]], wrote technical material for the pharmaceutical industry and the [[World Health Organization|WHO]], and founded the American branch of [[Mensa International|Mensa]].
Sturgeon held a wide variety of jobs during his lifetime. As an adolescent, he wanted to be a circus [[acrobatics|acrobat]]; an episode of [[rheumatic fever]] prevented him from pursuing this. From 1935 (aged 17) to 1938, he was a sailor in the [[merchant marine]], and elements of that experience found their way into several stories. He sold [[refrigerator]]s door to door. He managed a hotel in [[Jamaica]] around 1940–1941, worked in several construction and infrastructure jobs (driving a bulldozer in [[Puerto Rico]], operating a [[
Sturgeon played guitar and wrote music which he sometimes performed at [[
▲Sturgeon played guitar and wrote music which he sometimes performed at [[Science Fiction Convention]]s.
Sturgeon was married three times, had two long-term committed relationships outside of marriage, divorced once, and fathered a total of seven children.
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* In 1953, he wed Marion McGahan with whom he had a son, Robin (b. 1952); daughters Tandy (b. 1954) and Noël (b. 1956); and son Timothy (b. 1960). The children in "Tandy's Story" (1961) have the same names as these children.<ref name="sturgeon196104">{{Cite magazine |last=Sturgeon |first=Theodore |date=April 1961 |title=Tandy's Story |url=https://archive.org/stream/Galaxy_v19n04_1961-04#page/n85/mode/1up |magazine=Galaxy Science Fiction |pages=170–194}}</ref>
* In 1969, he began living with Wina Golden, a journalist, with whom he had a son, Andros.<ref>Noël Sturgeon [daughter], "Story Notes Volume XII", Sturgeon (2009), pp. 289–92.</ref><ref>Sturgeon (1978), p. 12.</ref>
* Finally, his last long-term committed relationship was with writer and educator Jayne Englehart Tannehill, with whom he remained until the time of his death. She joined Theodore Sturgeon at book signings for his collection "Maturity", and signed as "Jayne Sturgeon". Jayne Englehart had her own biological son, Mark J. Englehart, prior to her partnership with Sturgeon, to
Sturgeon was a lifelong [[smoking pipe (tobacco)|pipe]] smoker. His death from [[lung fibrosis]] may have been caused by exposure to [[asbestos]] during his merchant marine years.
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* ''[[The Dreaming Jewels]]'' (1950) <small> Also published as ''The Synthetic Man'' </small>
* ''[[More Than Human]]'' (1953) <small>[[Fix-up]] of three linked novellas, the first and third written around ''[[Baby Is Three]]'' (Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1952)</small>
* ''[[The Cosmic Rape]]'' (1958) <small>
* ''[[Venus Plus X]]'' (1960)
* ''[[Some of Your Blood]]'' (1961)
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* "And Now The News" (December 1956)
* "The Girl Had Guts" (January 1957)
* "[[The Man Who Lost the Sea]]" (October 1959)
* "Need" (1960)
* "How to Forget Baseball" (''[[Sports Illustrated]]'', December 1964)
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==Autobiography==
* ''Argyll: A Memoir''
==Relationship with Kurt Vonnegut==
[[Kurt Vonnegut]] based the name of his fictional science-fiction writer [[Kilgore Trout]] on Sturgeon's name.<ref>{{cite book | last1=Link | first1=Eric Carl | last2=Canavan | first2=Gerry | title=The Cambridge companion to American science fiction | publication-place=New York, NY | date=2015 | isbn=978-1-107-28060-1 | oclc=902771331 | doi = 10.1017/CCO9781107280601}}</ref> They became friends when Sturgeon moved to [[Truro, Massachusetts]].
==See also==
{{Portal |Speculative fiction }}
* [[Theodore Sturgeon Award]]
==
{{Reflist |refs=
<ref name=isfdb>
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<ref name=SFAwards>
[http://www.locusmag.com/SFAwards/Db/NomLit133.html#5050 "Sturgeon, Theodore"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121016200141/http://locusmag.com/SFAwards/Db/NomLit133.html |date=2012-10-16 }}. ''The Locus Index of SF Awards: Index to Literary Nominees''. [[Locus Publications]]. Retrieved 2013-03-26.</ref>
<ref name=sfhof-old>[http://www.midamericon.org/halloffame/ "Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130521070009/http://www.midamericon.org/halloffame/ |date=2013-05-21 }}. Mid American Science Fiction and Fantasy Conventions, Inc. Retrieved 2013-03-26. This was the official website of the hall of fame to 2004.</ref>▼
▲[http://www.midamericon.org/halloffame/ "Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame"]. Mid American Science Fiction and Fantasy Conventions, Inc. Retrieved 2013-03-26. This was the official website of the hall of fame to 2004.</ref>
}}
== General and cited sources ==
*{{cite book| first=Leonard| last=Nimoy| title=I Am Spock| publisher=Hyperion| location=New York| year=1995| isbn=978-0-7868-6182-8| url=https://archive.org/details/iamspock00nimo}}
*{{cite book | first=Theodore| last=Sturgeon | title=Sturgeon
*{{cite book | first=Theodore| last=Sturgeon | title=Slow Sculpture: Volume XII: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon| location=Berkeley, CA| year=2009 | isbn= 978-1-55643-834-9}}
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* [http://www.theodoresturgeontrust.com The Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust] – owners of Sturgeon copyrights, information on Sturgeon publications
* Theodore Sturgeon Papers ([http://hdl.handle.net/10407/6860068304 MS 303] and [http://hdl.handle.net/10407/3174061459 MS 254]) housed at the [http://spencer.lib.ku.edu/ Kenneth Spencer Research Library], University of Kansas
* {{sfhof |957 | Theodore Sturgeon}}
* {{isfdb name |56}}
* {{IBList|type=author|id=843|name=Theodore Sturgeon}}
* {{IMDb name|0836318}}
* {{Gutenberg author | id=55048 | name=Theodore Sturgeon}}
{{Memoryalpha}}
* [https://www.freesfonline.net/authors/Theodore_Sturgeon.html Theodore Sturgeon's online fiction] at Free Speculative Fiction Online
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[[Category:Nebula Award winners]]
[[Category:People from Springfield, Oregon]]
[[Category:
[[Category:Science fiction critics]]
[[Category:Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees]]
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[[Category:Novelists from New York (state)]]
[[Category:American male non-fiction writers]]
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