Case and the Dreamer (2 page)

I’ve admired his work for well over half a century, from his astonishing roll-call of short fiction (“Baby Is Three,” “Killdozer,” “Shottle Bop,” “Derm Fool,” “The [Widget], the [Wadget]. and Boff,” “Need,” “Bianca’s Hands,” “Yesterday Was Monday”) to his two legendary
Star Trek
scripts and his novel
More Than Human
, to
Some of Your Blood
, which even today remains one of the best vampire stories ever. It may be altogether unfair of me to say this, but at the time of Sturgeon’s appearance on the scene in the early 1940s, the vast majority of even the best science fiction was produced, with few exceptions, by writers with engineering backgrounds of one sort or another: far less interested in the humanity of their characters than in the rocketships they piloted and the gadgets they employed against their encounters with somewhat more sophisticated versions of Ming the Merciless. Ted dealt, over and over, with loneliness and pain, human cruelty and the sudden generosity of the human spirit, as no other writer of his milieu and time did. His was a unique heart, and it gave birth to a unique voice.

Of those three brief times, I remember best our playing together. I remember a strong, notably clear rhythm (did he have a twelve-string guitar with him then?), and a particularly impish lead line,
when we switched off, to match that swift, startling grin. I was deeply affected by what he did and who he was, and I’m grateful that I did get to meet him. I wish I’d known him properly.

Debbie Notkin

At a small convention near San Francisco in the 1980s, the late Judith Merrill was reminiscing about Theodore Sturgeon. Paul Williams asked her what she thought of the story “Mr. Costello, Hero.” “Not one of the great ones,” Judy said with her characteristic certainty. “I know because I don’t remember it.”

That metric doesn’t work for me. I don’t remember all of them, but then they come back in sharp relief if I open a book to one, or someone talks about it.

I can’t write about Theodore Sturgeon without writing about myself. The fiction of Theodore Sturgeon is a lifelong passion of mine. “Lifelong passion” may sound like a phrase from a teenage vampire novel, or perhaps a 1940s romantic movie. For me, this one has been more like a term used by a hermit living in the library stacks.

I was probably eleven when my father gave me my first adult science fiction story (by Isaac Asimov). I was probably twelve when I learned that the books on Dad’s shelves that said “edited by Groff Conklin,” usually had a story by Theodore Sturgeon in them, and that I could read that story from each book before I went back and read anything else. The same heuristic applied to the library. That would have been in 1962 or 1963; science fiction was still far closer to the pulp magazines than to the college classroom.

I didn’t buy many books until I was out on my own. I remember buying
Sturgeon Is Alive and Well
in paperback, from the college bookstore. New stories, when I thought I had found them all!

It’s a vicious rumor that the reason I was partners with Tom Whitmore for fifteen years was that he would find me uncollected Sturgeon
stories. Well, okay, it’s a vicious rumor that that was the only reason. Tom knew that checking crumbling magazines and obscure anthologies for Sturgeon stories was a way to my heart. He was good enough at it that by the time Bill Contento created the first comprehensive index to science fiction stories, there really wasn’t very much published Sturgeon I hadn’t read. (I believed that until this series started to appear, and Paul Williams and others dug up the really obscure early and unpublished pieces.)

I met the man himself a few times; I was an easy target for his legendary charm, but we never spent more than a few minutes in each other’s company. I have the obligatory signed book with the “ask the next question” glyph that he was so fond of. I have a clear memory of his piercing blue eyes, and the way he flirted with me by saying sweet things about booksellers—which was what I was doing at the time.

What interests me now about my forty-plus-year love affair with Sturgeon’s fiction is: What drew me in? What led a twelve-year-old girl with an extensive bookshelf at her fingertips to focus in on Sturgeon? I can remember the frisson of pleasure looking at a contents page, but I genuinely can’t recall why those were the stories I wanted to read. All I can do is make guesses.

First, the man could write. I was far too young to recognize specific stylistic tricks, but I imagine that I realized even then that his sentences, paragraphs, and stories were smoother, and more interesting, than most of the other men (and I use that word intentionally) whose stories I was reading.

Second, he liked and was interested in people. I grew up in a people-focused household, lots of guests, lots of international guests, conversation, interaction. Sturgeon was often writing about the kinds of people I hadn’t met or didn’t know, which was a plus. More important, I think, is that the people in his stories seemed real: complicated, imperfect, confused. I was confused; maybe I was looking for stories about other confused people, not the single-minded, confident heroes I found in most other stories of the time.

Third, he wrote about women. As a feminist adult, I certainly have reservations about how Sturgeon wrote female characters. When
I give his stories to women who didn’t grow up with them, my friends often say quizzically, “You
like
the women in those stories?” But all I knew then was that there
were
women in those stories: Arthur C. Clarke had no women; Asimov’s were way off the norm in one way or another; Heinlein’s were … well, entire books have been written about that. Sturgeon’s women were beautiful and smart, and they actually got to do things. Some of them were even scientists! That was enough for me then; a hell of a lot more than I was finding in most of what I read.

I can’t resist giving you a short list of favorites that aren’t in this volume: “Bright Segment” shook me up for weeks, and has informed everything I think about how and why humans abuse each other; “Thunder and Roses” might just be the best anti-war story ever written (though Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Lucky Strike” is up there with it); “Bulkhead” and “The Other Man” both say important things about who we share our own skulls with; “Die, Maestro, Die!” is a chilling mainstream story set in the big-band jazz era. I think Judy Merrill was wrong about “Mr. Costello, Hero,” which Paul and I both consider to be one of the best stories ever written about the lust for power. All of these can be found in previous volumes in this series (see the index in the back of the book to learn which stories are in which volumes).

Then there’s this book. I don’t think of this as Sturgeon’s finest period—few Sturgeon aficionados do—but still …

“Case and the Dreamer,” “Why Dolphins Don’t Bite,” “Blue Butter,” and “Not an Affair” are all the kind of stories I was combing early Groff Conklin anthologies for: single stories good enough to warrant buying the whole book, even if there’s nothing else there. And even the smallest, most trivial stories (and this volume has some) have those well-written sentences, those developed characters, those small memorable moments. Sturgeon’s
oeuvre
ranged from good to great, and if there’s one thing this series proves, it’s that even the “only good” stories are worth reading.

A lifelong passion is even better when shared: Paul Williams is one of the few people I ever met who cared about Sturgeon’s work as
much as (more than) I do. Paul’s story notes for the previous volumes were a labor of love, and a labor indeed. I deeply wish he were well enough to finish the task; and I thank him for his insights, his patience, and his readiness to involve me in this project of his heart.

I can’t imagine what it must be like for Noël Sturgeon, to travel a life from being a fictionalized character in your father’s stories to being the editor of your father’s collected stories. Certainly, I knew her name decades before I thought I would ever meet her. She has done a masterful job on these last volumes, and in doing so, she has brought Paul’s and my (and many other people’s) dreams to a most satisfying conclusion. I appreciate that more than I can say.

He heard Angela’s voice as he let himself in. “… and for heaven’s sake behave yourself tonight. Daddy’ll be very tired.”

“All right, Mummy,” said the back yard.

Les stood in the hall, his topcoat off one shoulder, his hat half extended toward the shelf over the umbrella stand. He cursed himself for ever having mentioned this Tuesday business to his wife. He would know better in the future. It was one thing to get sympathy, another to stand for these catechizing silences, this careful consideration.

He hung up his coat, and as he did so his attention was drawn to the two new scratches on the hardwood floor. They curved around the newel, parallel, bright, and deep. Roller skates again—Oh, what was the good of it? What weapons do you use against such innate destructiveness and stupidity in children, after you’ve tanned their bottoms red and deprived them of everything you can think of that they might value?

Shuff-shuff across the kitchen. (You’d think she’d get rid of those old slippers, or get a pair that.… He shook his head wearily. Hang on tight. On Tuesday, the tapping of heels would annoy you as much.) “Les, darling! You’re home already!”

She came close to him. He put his arms around her automatically. His eyes dropped as he held her, and again he saw the scratches. He compressed his lips to keep from mentioning them right away. Why start out the evening with a fuss? She saw the lips, and an answering tightness appeared between her eyes. “Again today?” she asked.

“It’s Tuesday, isn’t it?”

She took his hat. “Go on into the living room and relax. Dinner in a jiffy. Roast lamb.”

He ignored the suggestion about the living room as if it were a pointless joke. “Where’s Rosalind?”

“Out back.”

He should have said, “Where’s Bubbles?” “Rosalind” was a name reserved for school, birth certificates, and stern episodes—a prelude to punishment. Angela said quickly, “She’s been very good today.”

He ignored this, too. Angela always spoke up for the child. He marched through the hall and across the kitchen to the windows, with their red-and-white cottage curtains. He had wanted Venetian blinds and straight drapes.

He peered outside. Rosalind, who was seven, was standing out there in the dusk, talking with another little girl. Les cast a quick and practiced eye up and down the flower beds. Everything seemed all right. Of course, the light was none too good.…

There was the faintest of crackles behind him. He whirled. “Don’t do that!”

“I’m sorry.” Angela said it so swiftly that it was out almost before he had stopped speaking. She stopped pulling her knuckles, dropped her hands to her sides. He squirmed his shoulders and opened the back door.

“Les.”

“Be quiet,” he said. “What do you want?”

“Where are you going?”

“I thought,” he said carefully, “that I would get a breath of air. Is that wrong?”

“No,” she said tiredly. She knelt and opened the oven.

He watched her. “Why the questions? What did you think I was going to do—spy on a couple of kids?”

She turned to face him, a two-tined fork in one hand, a basting spoon in the other. She said, “I have no idea,” and went to the door. “Bubbles!”

It came back like an echo. “Yes, Mummy!” and then, “Last touch!” as she thumped the other child and came pelting into the house. “Here I am, Mummy. Hello, Daddy.” She gave him a quick smile with the lower half of her face. She smiled like Miss Maison, the gaunt receptionist at the office, who smiled like that at him every
morning, and who did not like him. Women. They learned their tricks early. Did them no good if you were onto them, though.

“Wash your hands, honey. Apricot pie.” Les wondered obscurely how this particle of menu affected the child. Angela’s “Dinner in a jiffy—roast lamb,” had struck him as inane. Rosalind went to wash, and came back—she seems clean, he thought—with a tuneless mum-mum-num-num which he bore with wordless fortitude. Finally, “Let’s eat it,” Angela said with her usual phrase.

Les wondered vaguely why he should be annoyed with any idea connected with “always.” It was possibly because he was beginning to doubt the “always” idea. There is no always. You may not always be master of your own house. You may not always have a job. Angela … there seemed an “always” about Angela, somehow, this pretty, inarticulate person who could always have dinner on time and refused to argue. He let his mind drift back to their meeting, where she sang. Sang.… She never sang any more. Hadn’t for weeks, at any rate. He shrugged, watching her.

Rosalind danced around her mother as dinner was served. She had Angela’s small wide-spaced eyes and placid brow, Angela’s carven mouth and emotional nostrils. All this was built onto a miniature of his own square frame.

Les took his place at the table, his eyes flicking over the setting. He did not like his napkin under his fork. His napkin was not under his fork. He did not like butter on his bread plate. There was no butter on his bread plate. He exhaled, waited for Angela to begin, and started to eat.

It was a delicious and interminable meal. Once Rosalind reached for salt, bumped her milk glass. It teetered. Les watched it and stopped chewing. Angela stopped breathing. Nothing spilled. Things went on. Rosalind, who usually talked too much, too loudly, and with her mouth full, talked not at all, and watched Les between bites.

And then Angela committed the real enormity of tactlessness. Possibly it was an attempt—any attempt—to fill the silence with small talk. It certainly could mean nothing—his office affairs were beyond her, or at least he considered them so, which amounted to the same thing. She said, “How’s Parks?”

How’s Parks. Parks, with his high forehead and large white teeth and pleasant, unshakable secretiveness. How’s Parks, who came to his office every Tuesday, and watched while Les entered and sub-balanced the Stockton account—the most important account the firm had, the account for which he had been groomed and promoted. Parks was there on Mr. Bryce’s orders. Parks was authorized to ask any question, to question any method. Today had been the ninth consecutive Tuesday on which Parks had spent the afternoon with him.