Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Other Celia by Tag: Theodore Sturgeon. Harper Audio was founded in 1952 under the name “Caedmon.” Harper Audio still occasionally publishes under its Caedmon label but its real heyday was in the late 1970s. Uniquely, the back of each album featured unique liner notes typically written specifically for the LP. Witness this vintage magazine ad (from Unearth, Spring 1978): The Graveyard Shift with Dudley Knight. Beginning it seems in the mid-1970s Dudley Knight, a U.C. Irvine professor of drama, voiced a series called The Graveyard Shift on KPFK, Los Angeles. The purpose was to tell stories of the macabre. His broadcasts aired weekly with shows of variable length (between half and hour and two and a half hours). Here is a list of broadcast stories, with links to audio when available: Jan. . 1974- The Room In The Tower by E.F. Benson (34 min.) May. . 1977 – Upon The Dull Earth by Philip K. Dick (55 min.) Jun. 08, 1977 – I See A Man Sitting On A Chair And The Chair Is Biting His Leg by and (57 min.) Jun. 22, 1977 – It by Theodore Sturgeon (57 min.) Jun. . 1977 – Count Magnus by M.R. James (35 min.) Jul. 06, 1977 – Children Of The Corn by Stephen King (71 min.) Aug. 03, 1977 – Compulsory Games by Robert Aickman (56 min.) Aug. 17, 1977 – The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (37 min.) Aug. 31, 1977 – Silent Snow, Secret Snow by Conrad Aiken (46 min.) Sep. 21, 1977 – The Empty House by Algernon Blackwood (42 min.) Oct. 19, 1977 – Armaja Das by Joe Haldeman (44 min.) Nov. 08, 1977 – It Only Comes Out At Night by Dennis Etchison (33 min.) Dec. 14, 1977 – Couching At The Door by D.K. Broster (59 min.) Dec. . 1977 – The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges (35 min.) Jan. 18, 1978 – Suspicion by Dorothy L. Sayers (38 min.) Jan. . 1978 – I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison (41 min.) Feb. 01, 1978 – The Gentleman From America by Michael Arlen (48 min.) Feb. 08, 1978 – Bulkhead by Theodore Sturgeon (75 min.) Feb. 22, 1978 – Gonna Roll The Bones by Fritz Leiber (60 min.) Mar. 22, 1978 – Sometimes They Come Back by Stephen King (58 min.) Apr. 05, 1978 – Three Miles Up by Elizabeth Jane Howard (42 min.) Apr. 19, 1978 – Eine Kleine Nachtmusik by Fredric Brown (49 min.) Jun. 07, 1978 – The Ash Tree by M.R. James (36 min.) Jul. 26, 1978 – The Squaw by Bram Stoker (35 min.) Aug. 30, 1978 – Batard by Jack London (39 min.) Sep. 06, 1978 – The Game Of Rat And Dragon by Cordwainer Smith (37 min.) Oct. 17, 1978 – The Body Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson (49 min.) |MP3| Nov. 21, 1978 – The Other Celia by Theodore Sturgeon (48 min.) Dec. 06, 1978 – Benlian by Oliver Onions (44 min.) Jan. 03, 1979 – Before Eden by Arthur C. Clarke (32 min.) Jan. 31, 1979 – The Haunters and the haunted by Edward Bulwer Lytton (106 min.) Feb. 23, 1979 – Space Rats Of The CCC by (37 min.) Apr. 03, 1979 – Breakfast At Twilight by Philip K. Dick (41 min.) Apr. 17, 1979 – Thurnley Abby by Perceval Landon (43 min.) . . 1985 – Afternoon At Schrafts by Gardner Dozis, Jack Don, and Michael Swanwick Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3| . . . – The Whisperer In Darkness by H.P. Lovecraft. The SFFaudio Podcast #191 – READALONG: The World Jones Made by Philip K. Dick. The SFFaudio Podcast #191 – Jesse, Tamahome, and Jenny talk about the Brilliance Audio audiobook, The World Jones Made by Philip K. Dick. Talked about on today’s podcast: Racy?, 1950s, hermaphrodites, relativism is mandated by the government, reverse Nazism, the Wikipedia entry for relativism, relativism as a tool against disbelief, L. Ron Hubbard, The Way To Happiness , communism, “good explorations”, Doug Cussick, political correctness, the opposite of communism?, China, Chinese communism, WWII, “Hitler was a precog”, escape your fate by embracing your fate, seeing into the future after your death, the devolution of a mind in a dead brain, a molluscular and mineral afterlife, grab bag of ideas, giant alien jellyfish, Brilliance Audio, pollen?, spores?, polyps?, planula! , Floyd Jones (is he the hero?), the Venus babies, the people in the Womb, seven mutants in a warehouse in San Fransisco, artificial animals, Venusian wallpaper?, hot and moist, The Truman Show , people have to get off of Earth, the Moon as the 51st state, King Newt running the Moon, pantropy, tropism, genetic modification, Nexus by Ramez Naam, More Than Human by Ramez Naam, Kim Stanley Robinson, More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon, the ending, Jones as the new Jesus, contempt for the audience, The Rocky Horror Picture Show , kids getting off on power, suicide, Hitler’s death, “how could a precog be wrong?”, future knowledge of your own knowledge, its very confusing, is Cussick the main character?, rebellion by shoplifting, sexism, WWIII, “asparagus sucks!”, women as litmus paper, she always held the majority opinion, visiting a racist elderly relative, “No grandma! That’s wrong!”, irony, the nameless character has a fascinating story, why don’t we get a sense of the masses, paralleling the rise of Hitler, lebensraum, interesting scenes interspersed with less interesting scenes, domestic scenes vs. organizational scenes, Tyler’s story, the Venus children, paranoia, Shell Game by Philip K. Dick, redundant exists, The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch , Counter Clock World , We Can Remember It For You Wholesale , The Zap Gun , Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? , Blade Runner , Robert Downey Jr., A Scanner Darkly , The Man In The High Castle , alternate history, most people who live in SF universes don’t read SF, a BBC adaptation of The Man In The High Castle , an epic story about a guy who makes jewelry, Terry Gilliam, Anthony Boucher, “a hasty and disappointing effort”, perk up vs. zone out, civil war or aliens?, a golden land of opportunity and adventure (and slime). Radio Project X: The Other Celia [AUDIO DRAMA] Radio Project X , a great new audio drama troupe out of Toronto, makes a combination of compelling and humorous audio dramatizations – recorded live on stage. The latest one to reach my ears is centered around a terrific adaptation of a creepy Theodore Sturgeon story entitled The Other Celia (aka The Blonde With The Mysterious Body ). Like the other Radio Project X episodes already released, this program is followed by a series of skits, all funny, and all very Canadian – the kind you’d hear on CBC radio in years past. The Other Celia Adapted from the short story by Theodore Sturgeon; Performed by a full cast 1 |MP3| – Approx. 1 Hour 10 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA] Podcaster: Radio Project X Podcast: August 14, 2012 Something drastic should happen to all snoopers – but nothing as awful and frightful as this! First published in Galaxy, March 1957. The Other Celia by Theodore Sturgeon. You may be looking for The Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust : the Literary Trust page has information about the new books published by North Atlantic Books, which include some previously unpublished short stories. The TS Literary Trust are the folks who own the copyrights to Sturgeon's work. NEWS: Paul Williams, the editor of the "Collected Stories", is very ill and can use your help. All 13 volumes of "Collected Stories. " have been published (July 2011). See The Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust page for more info. See also interesting commentary here. There is a recollection by W. Sturgeon on the web, of her and Ted watching the first moon landing. W. writes to me, "Ted and I discussed this so often afterwards, it was very important to him." Updates to the Theodore Sturgeon Page: 8-25-13: Link added to new video by Open Road Media 2-11-10: Link added to a fascinating essay by Hart Williams 5-30-09: Interview with Ted Alvy about Sturgeon now online. The Works of Theodore Sturgeon - hyperlinked database compiled by Wm F Seabrook. Recollections of Sturgeon by people who met him / knew him well , by David D. Duncan (originally published in the Phoenix , the University of Tennessee literary magazine, in 1979) -- An out-of- print book recommended by Sturgeon on the subject of poetry "Ask the next question" by Sturgeon. Pictures Biography Sturgeon's varied creations Miscellaneous Information Reviews of Sturgeon's work Other authors Sturgeon influenced Links of related interest Thanks and acknowledgements. Picture above provided by A. Sturgeon, taken by W. Sturgeon. Biography. Theodore Sturgeon was born Edward Hamilton Waldo on February 26, 1918, at Staten Island, New York. In 1927 his parents divorced, and in 1929 his mother remarried William Sturgeon; around this time Edward changed his name to Theodore because he liked the nickname "Ted". His first story, "Heavy Insurance," was sold in 1938 for five dollars to McClure's Syndicate for publication in newspapers. The sale of "The God in the Garden" to Unknown was his first published science fiction story. Sturgeon died on May 8, 1985. His novel More Than Human won the International Fantasy Award. "Slow Sculpture" won both the Hugo and Nebula awards. He was posthumously awarded the Life Achievement Award at the World Fantasy Awards. This information was gleaned from "Theodore Sturgeon" by Lucy Menger (1981), and from the introduction to "The Ultimate Egoist: volume I: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon" (1994). Menger's book is an inexpensive biography/discussion of Sturgeon's work. I found it in an overstock/used book store for $1. Stories about Sturgeon (not by him) More biographical information is contained in the Theodore Sturgeon FAQ An obituary of Sturgeon, part of George Willick's SPACELIGHT: Vital Statistics of science fiction/fantasy authors. Sturgeon's varied creations. Books and stories Complete list of books and stories The Works of Theodore Sturgeon - hyperlinked database compiled by Bill Seabrook. Two short stories online; these are legal as scifi.com has purchased the rights. The Girl Had Guts The Other Celia "Ask the next question", June 1967 Cavalier Magazine Seabrook's database listing of Sturgeon's nonfiction NPR broadcasted a dramatization of "Hurricane Trio" on Sept 5, 2000 and will rebroadcast it March 6, 2001. And, you can buy a copy of this program here (it's on page 3). Several of Sturgeon's stories were broadcast on the radio show "X Minus One." ("Mr. Costello, Hero," "The Stars are the Styx," and "Saucer of Loneliness.") on the subject of poetry. "Killdozer" was made into a movie. This site changes their links sometimes, so this link may or may not work, same with the next three links. "King and Four Queens" was novelized by Sturgeon - a western "The Rare Breed" was novelized by Sturgeon - a western "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" was novelized by Sturgeon The story "Bright Segment" was made into a French film. (Sturgeon discusses this briefly in the story introduction in the book Alien Cargo .) Information about a play written by Lisa Morton based on Sturgeon's short story "The Graveyard Reader". Miscellaneous Information. The Potlach 10 con featured "Thunder and Roses" as it's book of honor; the con was Feb 23-25, 2001 in San Francisco. , by David D. Duncan (originally published in the Phoenix , the University of Tennessee literary magazine, in 1979). Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award The official web page Some additional information provided by Science Fiction Weekly is here The Theodore Sturgeon FAQ entry about Sturgeon's Law the "Hacker Jargon" entry for this quote. (I'm wording this carefully to avoid lots of hits of this page by people looking for the S-word.) Sturgeon was one of the witnesses who heard L. Ron discussing how to make lots of money. Information about the Theodore Sturgeon/Kilgore Trout connection. Direct information comes from Kurt Vonnegut himself, in an interview where he was asked about Kilgore Trout. A different Vonnegut interview is posted here, with similar substance. Reviews. "Selected Stories": NEW 2010: Sort of a review, but mostly a fascinating essay by Hart Williams John Clute, for Salon The New York Times -- you have to register to see this article. D. Davis, for Genrebusters Victoria Strauss, for the SF Site Norman Haase, for Reader's Robot Science Fiction Elizabeth Oldfather, a tiny review. D. Douglas Fratz, for Science Fiction Weekly. reviewed by Eric Weeks, for the If web-zine D. Davis, for Genrebusters reviewed by Eric Weeks, for the If web-zine D. Davis, for Genrebusters D. Davis for Genrebusters reviewed by Duane Swierczynski for the SF Site reviewed by Eric Weeks, for the If web-zine several people have posted their opinion of this book on the web. The Hub ("The Unauthorized Star Trek Review Pages") for The New York Review of Science Fiction reviewed by First Impressions reviewed by the on-line magazine Strange Words a review written in French (by Pascal J. Thomas, for Watching the Skies) review by D. S. Black, for San Francisco Bay Guardian review by Hart Williams, "His Vorpal Sword" review by Science Fiction Weekly (Curt Wohleber) review by Hart Williams, addressing the question of the science fiction ghetto. Authors influenced by Sturgeon. Video by Open Road Media, with several prominent authors discussing Sturgeon (reprinted by Strange Words) Paul diFilippo, who doesn't discuss Sturgeon on this page -- but Sturgeon shows up in diFilippo's short story "Alice, Alfie, Ted and the Aliens" reprinted in the anthology Lost Pages . James Gunn Jacqueline Lichtenberg discusses Sturgeon and his motto, "ask the next question." S P Somtow Norman Spinrad . same document also here. Authors who influenced Sturgeon: -- by Karle Wilson Baker. An out-of-print book recommended by Sturgeon; see the link for details. Clearly Sturgeon was influenced by many other authors, I'm not going to post them all here! The Plynck is a bit of an exception since it's out of print. Other links of possible interest. OTHER STURGEON PAGES: Iliad Books has made a very nice page about Sturgeon, and they sell some of his older books at good prices. Another enthusiastic Sturgeon page. (Devin Dukes) Clive England's 'The Stories of Theodore Sturgeon' is a good page. See also his reference document for the Collected Stories, with artwork and contents listings. Another page related to Sturgeon with links to copies of pictures from my page. naughty naughty, you didn't give me credit or more importantly credit to the photographer (Rich Buhler). (Page is partially in German.) The Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust: information about the new books being published by North Atlantic Books, which include some previously unpublished short stories. The TS Literary Trust are the folks who own the copyrights to Sturgeon's work. This page contains an excellent article written by Paul Williams. Le Cafard Cosmique ("The Cosmic Bug") is a new science fiction French web site with this page dedicated to Sturgeon. (In French.) Theodore Sturgeon web page, from the Slovak Republic perhaps? A Japanese page about Sturgeon Cyber Space Spinner's listing on Sturgeon -- not much information is here, yet. A listing of Sturgeon's books, in french. By Yvon Allard, maybe? Another Sturgeon page, by Arnaud Leyssens, in french. Another french-language Sturgeon page, I'm not sure who made this page. A list of all the books Sturgeon published in Sweden. Partial list of Sturgeon's fiction with illustrations, by Michael Main. OF MISCELLANEOUS INTEREST: Stories/articles submitted to the Theodore Sturgeon Page (currently, I just have one story) A song called "Sturgeon's Law" by David Kendall Grant, you can download it for free! Internet Top 100 SF/Fantasy List: currently "More Than Human" is #88 (8/19/03). I note that since I added this link quite a while ago, "More Than Human" has dropped in the rankings -- in the last 90's it was in the top 50. Admittedly most of the top 100 books are excellent; I'm not going to argue that "More than Human" should be #1. Go there and vote! Locus Poll of Deceased 20th century SF & fantasy writers who will still be read 50 years from 2001 -- Sturgeon placed 7th. The Horror Writers Association has a list of the top 40 horror books of all time, including Some of Your Blood . Science Fiction Citations for the OED -- Sturgeon contributed quite a few words. The Heinlein Society -- Robert A. Heinlein. SF RESOURCE PAGES / WEB SITES. Links to web pages about many other science fiction/fantasy authors. This was the first page that linked to this page. -- reviews, links to pages about authors, monthly columns. Science Fiction Resource Guide, many many links. Science Fiction Resources, from CostumeSuperCenter.com; mainly links to other resource websites Alpha Ralpha Boulevard, author bibliographies for many authors -- see their Theodore Sturgeon Page. Science Fiction Crowsnest a special SF/Fantasy search engine & more. They only gave this site 3 stars out of a possible 6, how sad. Northwest Science Fiction Resources has various interesting links. They used to have links to authors' web pages, including this one, but they got rid of it. Oh well, they're still a nice site. The Ultimate SF Web Guide has many links and some information. I sent them an email to inform them that "E Waldo Hunter" was not Sturgeon's birth name. , a well-organized collection of links to sf resources. Thanks: I have a "quotes" page, with various interesting quotes from Sturgeon. If you have any suggestions, email them to me -- right now I'm not working on this very hard, but if people send me their favorite quotes I'll take care of it much sooner. Eric Weeks's home page This page had 13080 hits from it's creation in November, 1996 through the end of the year 2000. When I was last keeping track (fall/winter of '00) it was getting about 560 hits per month. I've stopped keeping track starting '01. Current address: Eric R. Weeks Department of Physics Emory University Atlanta, GA 30322-2430. The ED SF Project. The /SCI FICTION Project, that is. We're showing the love for five and a half years of great short fiction, and we need your help! We've got over 300 stories to cover, so if you're a person who loves short speculative fiction, we want you. Go here to read the list and add your voice. Wednesday, November 30, 2005. "The Other Celia" by Theodore Sturgeon: An Appreciation by John Joseph Adams. If there's anything positive to take away from the closing of SCI FICTION, it's that it gave me an excuse to re-read "The Other Celia" by Theodore Sturgeon. I chose to appreciate this story because it's one of the first stories I remember reading on SCI FICTION, and it made me slap myself upside the head for not having read more Sturgeon (this was quickly thereafter remedied). If I recall correctly, when I read "The Other Celia," SCI FICTION wasn't the must-read magazine for me that it has since become. I was aware of it, sure; I think the only other story I'd read was "Cucumber Gravy" by Susan Palwick. I'd really enjoyed the Palwick, but for some reason I never got around to checking in every week. All that changed after I read "The Other Celia." Sure, it's a reprint of a classic, by one of the undeniable masters of short SF, but still, it really opened my eyes to what Ellen was trying to do with the site, and made me keep coming back week after week after that. Another reason reading "The Other Celia" on SCI FICTION stuck in my mind, is because when I read it, I hadn't actually planned to sit and read a whole story. I had just idly clicked on the link to see the first few lines, intending to perhaps read it later. But that's all I needed to be utterly hooked. Here's how it begins: If you live in a cheap enough rooming house and the doors are made of cheap enough pine, and the locks are old-fashioned single-action jobs and the hinges are loose, and if you have a hundred and ninety lean pounds to operate with, you can grasp the knob, press the door sidewise against its hinges, and slip the latch. Further, you can lock the door the same way when you come out. Slim Walsh lived in, and was, and had, and did these things partly because he was bored. The poetry of Sturgeon's language is what really captured me from the get go. "Slim Walsh lived in, and was, and had, and did these things . . ." That line right there is what did it. But these opening paragraphs also paint this compelling character portrait of our hero, and then the story moves on into this really strange but undeniably compelling fantasy--as Slim becomes obsessed with Celia, so does the reader. Robert Charles Wilson has said that "The Other Celia" is "in its way as perfect a science-fiction story as The Time Machine." I agree completely, and it's hard to say it any better than that. 3 Comments: Gotta agree. Sturgeon was an undeniable Master. Even today, his stories resonate with his language and precision of writing. The thing about Sturgeon that always draws me back is his uncompromising humanism. The man cared and his literature still does, and that, I think, is the true function of art and artists. They bind us together despite ourselves and our inability to see us as they do. I've been trying to locate what magazine I read The Other Celia and a story called Psi Man. Both stories stuck with me as a weird genre of science fiction, similar to Borges perhaps. The Other Celia by Theodore Sturgeon. Books by James Sallis. A Saucer of Loneliness, Volume VII: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, ed. Paul Williams, North Atlantic Books (November 2000) $30.00. Selected Stories by Theodore Sturgeon, Vintage Books (Oct 2000) $13.00. When, in the Sixties, a new writer in the field, I spoke to others, Chip Delany, say, or Mike Moorcock, about the writers we most admired, a common handful of names bobbed to the surface. , Cordwainer Smith, Fritz Leiber, Phil Farmer, Phil Dick. In each case there'd be electric sparks jumping between us ( Remember . . . that scene . . . the way he . . . ) like massive neurons firing. Then one or the other of us would mention Sturgeon, and silence would fall. In respect, certainly, but something more as well. It was almost as though we realized that whatever we said, whatever words we found, would be pale imitations of what Sturgeon had done. If she's dead, I thought, I'll never find her in this white flood of moonlight on the white sea, with the surf seething in and over the pale, pale sand like a great shampoo. Almost always, suicides who stab themselves or shoot themselves in the heart carefully bare their chests; the same strange impulse generally makes the sea-suicide go naked. These past weeks I've been spending time in company with one of my oldest friends, a man so deeply imbedded in my life that, were his many presences there torn away, I myself well might begin to fade—a man I never met. I read Vintage Books' excellent Selected Stories in a single sitting, reread two or three favorite novels, shuffled again and again through my stack of worn paperbacks, dipping in and out like a hummingbird. Then, after looking back over earlier volumes in Paul Williams's ongoing, heroic project to restore to print all of Sturgeon's stories, I turned to this latest, seventh volume. What most surprises me is recognizing how many times I've read many of these stories, two dozen times or more, some of them, in the forty-five years that Sturgeon and I have been traveling companions. By contrast, one of them, "The Education of Drusilla Strange," I read but once, again some forty-plus years ago, yet remember as vividly as if it were last week. This story I found to be scored so deeply within me that I didn't so much read as remember it, in much the same way that I might recall events or experiences from my own life. And that, perhaps more than anything, gives the measure of Sturgeon's particular genius. The prison ship, under full shields, slipped down toward the cove, and made no shadow on the moonlit water, and no splash as it slid beneath the surface. They put her out and she swam clear, and the ship nosed up and silently fled. Two wavelets clapped hands softly, once, and that was the total mark the ship made on the prison wall. There are writers who throughout their careers with a certain relentlessness pursue the same themes again and again, forever refining, restating terms, purifying tone and attack, honing the edge. Years ago in a New Yorker interview Alberto Moravia remarked of such writers that "Their truth is self-repeating. They keep rewriting the same book . . . trying to perfect their expression of the one problem they were born to understand." Glib perhaps, but in large part true. And especially true, I think, of highly individualistic writers, those who work within a genre, for instance, yet are always pushing the envelope (and often, as well, the postbox into which they drop it) towards some new reach and hold. Their aesthetic goal comes to seem, and in some respects no doubt is, a search for personal transformation. In a wonderful essay on Richard Yates for the Boston Review, Stewart O'Nan pointed out that among the many obligations we assume as writers is the imperative to do whatever we can to preserve the work of those who came before us, to see that it's not forgotten. This is a charge Paul Williams, with his crusade to ransom Sturgeon's stories, has taken to heart, one which now, in my own small way, I'd like to second. More than anyone else, Theodore Sturgeon taught me to write. And long before that, before I even knew it, I think, he made me want to be a writer. When I first encountered it, Sturgeon's work affected me in ways no other had. I could not throw off stories like "The Other Celia," "Bright Segment," "The Professor's Teddy Bear," "Scars." They followed me around, floated towards me on the night's dark oil, stalked me. And when, about 1964, I began seriously trying to write fiction, it was to Sturgeon that I turned. I sat in the student union of the university I'd not so much dropped out of as evaporated from, and read compulsively, over and over again, everything of the man's I could find. More Than Human, The Dreaming Jewels, Some of Your Blood, The Cosmic Rape. And stories: "The Man Who Lost the Sea," "Cellmate," "A Saucer of Loneliness," "And Now the News." Trying to see how he did it. Trying to understand how he went about making his characters so real, how he brought these made-up worlds into such vivid focus. And just how it was that he managed to affect me so. In an introduction to Volume II of the complete Sturgeon stories, Chip Delany recounts reading "Thunder and Roses" at age ten or eleven, recalling his fascination at the manner in which Sturgeon paced characters through all sorts of "ordinary things like shaving and taking showers" making it all so much more vivid than seemed possible, describing "the feel of warm water down your neck" and the crumpled tube of toothpaste on the shelf while all along, outside, the characters' world was coming to an end. That a writer should uncompromisingly, in stories of the fantastic, set out to memorialize quotidian life and language seems at first a paradox; in fact, it's the engine of Sturgeon's art. Such grafting of the extraordinary onto the ordinary lies at the very heart of what he does. He sweeps up the textures of momentary life (the only life we ever truly know, after all, however bolstered or diluted it may be by memory and anticipation) and tucks them into something far larger. His beloved halfwits, though sanctioned from it, live embedded in the common society. That common society is itself but one of many echoes, some audible, some faint, of all societies: historical societies, future societies, possible societies. Loving humanity, loving his misfits and miscreants perhaps most of all, so intimately aligned with his characters that he tells their stories from the inside, nonetheless Sturgeon stands forever apart, seeing the should and could be in the is. Seeing through to the other side of that is, as well. Saying again and again, with Rimbaud, that everything we are taught is false. Believing with Valery that "A work of art should always teach us that we have not seen what we see." Further along in that same introduction, Delany wrote: "Sturgeon wanted a world that worked differently from the one we live in; and that difference was that it had a place for love and logic both. What seemed to bolster him and give him personal patience and also artistic perseverance was his apprehension of the interconnectedness of all life's varied and variegated aspects." This, too, comes close to central concerns. For Sturgeon not only retrieves and holds in suspension those aspects of life we take so much for granted—patterns of apprehension, textures of mundane life, what philosophers call dailyness —he also taps directly into that sense we all have of the connectedness of things, that sense of something more, something transcendent, at the core of our consciousness. Sturgeon wanted "a world that worked differently," Delany remarks, thereby introducing another aspect of the man. There was about him an element of contrariety investing all he did. Sadly for all of us, and for Ted Sturgeon most of all, that contrariety was not always a positive thing. It allowed him as writer to see things anew, to look through from the other side, as it were—to cast aside received wisdom, almost without effort, for that adversary intent Lionel Trilling holds to be at the heart of all great art—but it also occasioned great personal difficulties, gravely interfered with his career and disrupted his life, let him judas-goat himself into horrendous writing blocks. In a 1976 profile, Paul Williams noted: "Ted told me he'd been hearing this voice inside him all his life which says, in response to whatever is or seems to be expected of him by the outside world, 'I won't do it.' Only recently, he said, he's realized that there's another half to the sentence, and what he's really saying, deep in there somewhere, is, 'I won't do what they want me to do.' " Something of the eternal adolescent, then, unwilling or unable to accept the world as it is, striking out, often with the clear, Rimbaudian brilliance of the young, other times in blind, insensate fury, when the world will not be as he wants it to be. The moralist, the idealist—and Sturgeon was both—feels deeply the loss of what he, what the world, has never had. That sense of loss everywhere in Sturgeon is almost Miltonic. His characters, like Drusilla exiled here to this backwards, prison planet Earth, represent, remember, or envision other, finer existences. (" . . . Earth, which was her world falsified; and the endless music, which was her world in truth . . . ") Though often stunted by circumstance, history, heredity and convention, they are people capable of greatness: the near-morons of "Bright Segment," The Cosmic Rape and More Than Human, supermen-unaware like Horty in The Dreaming Jewels, or the fabulous inventor-songwriter-sculptor-poet-genius of "Maturity." Loners and outcasts all. All of them, too, to some degree, self-portraits. In A Saucer of Loneliness, this book so filled with amazements, the most amazing thing of all might easily go overlooked. It shows up in the Editor's Note: "This seventh volume contains stories written between autumn 1952 and autumn 1953." That in one calendar year a single writer could publish so many outstanding stories, stories such as " . . . And My Fear Is Great . . .," "The Wages of Synergy," "A Way of Thinking," "Mr. Costello, Hero, "The World Well Lost," "The Touch of Your Hand," stories of such excellence as would support any other writer's entire career, is astonishing. His first novel, The Dreaming Jewels, had come out in 1950; More Than Human appeared in book form in 1953. Stories like "The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff," "To Here and the Easel" and "Hurricane Trio" waited just around the corner. Yancey, who had once been killed, lay very still with his arm flung across the pillow, and watched the moonlight play with the color of Beverly's hair. . . .The waves blundered into the cliff below, hooting through the sea- carved boulders, frightening great silver ghosts of spray out and up into the torn and noisy air. . . .He wished he could sleep. For two years he had been glad he did not sleep. Art, like great conversation, contrives to rescue us from the commonplace, to break through the crust of habit and routine and let us see anew, feel anew—to make our world large again. This is something I first learned at age twelve, sitting on a screened porch half a mile away from Huck's Mississippi with Jimmy Reed and Hank Williams spilling from the jukebox at the drive-in just down the road. And it wasn't from William Faulkner or Robert Browning or James Joyce that I learned it (though I was reading them all), but from Theodore Sturgeon. I realize it again each time I go back to him. What better reason to keep going back? Theodore Sturgeon is among the finest writers this country has produced. He is, like all great writers, all great artists, absolutely one of a kind, sui generis. We can only hope that, with time, with crusading efforts such as Paul Williams's, he might come to receive the approbations due him. Meanwhile, he remains an intimate part of many of us. Sturgeon's stories are pokers stirring the coals of our lives and feelings back to flame. They are, each of them, anthems of praise and wonder sung by one small cell to the larger organism, to Life. To contact us, send an email to Fantasy & Science Fiction. If you find any errors, typos or anything else worth mentioning, please send it to [email protected]. Copyright © 1998–2020 Fantasy & Science Fiction All Rights Reserved Worldwide. The Other Celia by Theodore Sturgeon. A lonely and obscure young woman, whom no one has ever loved, is chosen out of a crowd of people to receive a special message one day - by a small, glowing, saucer-shaped object that swoops out of the sky and descends on her. After this, she's a celebrity. Everyone wants to know what the message was, but after all these years she's finally got something that's her very own, and she doesn't want to share. After a fight with her mother, who wants to know what the saucer told her daughter for her own selfish reasons, she runs out into the night and walks along the beach, going deeper into the water as she walks. As she's about to go under a man runs out and pulls her out of the surf. He tells her the message from the saucer; it was his loneliness that sent it. They walk off, two lonely people who have found each other. Message found in a bottle - sender unknown. Still alive, or long dead, the last of his species, or a traveller marooned on alien shores. Perhaps in the end, all that matters is this: That even through loneliness there is an end. And for those who are lonely enough, long enough, the message is cast adrift on the darkest beaches of . . . the Twilight Zone. Dedicated to the Memory of. Theodore Sturgeon's original short story of the same name is quite different from this adaptation, though the basic story is the same. The short story places the emphasis on the girl's attempted suicide, and her story is told in flashbacks while her rescuer listens. The teleplay does not explain clearly what the saucer is, leaving the audience to figure this out on it's own till the ending narration, while the short story is very clear on what it was right away - a sort of message in the bottle from a lonely creature. That being said, I'm not sure there was a better way to film this story. It might have been a little more dramatic to film it as Sturgeon wrote it, though it would then have been an unutterably dreary piece. There is no doubt that the teleplay is lacking in drama, for the most part because we just can't whip up any sympathy for that main character. Shelley Duvall is generally always good, but again I'm not sure anyone could have done much with this woman. In the short story the character is definitely portrayed as a nobody, the kind of person whom no one notices and though Shelley does this job extremely well, most of what we see is just Shelley with a vacant look on her face. Whether non-acting or the director's vision, it's just not enough to make us care about her. Nan Martin plays the mother as an alcoholic, embittered woman, jealous of anything her daughter might have that she doesn't, but even with that small of a part she has more presence than Duvall does in the entire episode. Richard Libertini is practically wasted as the rescuer; he's onscreen for less than five minutes. The short story is not that good; in fact, it's one of my least favorite Sturgeon stories, which is tough to say because I generally love all his work. What I would have loved to see the new Twilight Zone adapt was his "Shottle Bop," a ripping good ghost story, or possibly "The Other Celia," an alien story of a different sort, instead of this tale. However, any Sturgeon story is a wonderful addition to a TV series, and I thank the writers of the NTZ for using two of his stories during it's run. Sturgeon died not long before this episode aired, which accounts for the dedication at the end. Today's television could truly benefit from using a few of his tales, though I suppose that will never happen. I'm not sure the writer's of UPN's past Twilight Zone disaster had read anything other than the back of a cereal box. Their stories certainly don't reflect any more imagination than the ingredient panel on a box of Kix.