Killdozer! (50 page)

Beard in the letter invites Sturgeon to visit him, and in a letter to his mother dated April 6, 1941, Sturgeon mentions that in the next week he and Dorothe have plans to:
drive forty miles to Suffern, N.Y., where lives Captain Beard, my collaborator on a new series for
Unknown.

In the Sturgeon Papers at the Spencer Library at the University of Kansas there is an incomplete manuscript of a longer version of this story, typed by Sturgeon, and an attached letter from TS asking his wife to edit it down from 13,500 words to 6,000 (presumably at Campbell’s request), retyping and rewriting as necessary. He asks her to drop the first 9½ pages and suggests a couple of other possible cuts, but leaves the decision-making to her discretion. He also provides instructions on how to mail it to the magazine when she’s finished.

The missing manuscript pages (14–19, 29–33, and 40 to end) are probably absent because they weren’t rewritten and could be included as is in the final manuscript. If Dorothe did in fact cut and edit the story from the surviving manuscript (we don’t know for certain that Sturgeon didn’t do the job himself in the end), she did an extraordinary job. Whole paragraphs of exposition have been added, plus
connecting sentences here and there, that sound very much like Sturgeon, and indeed the finished work is one of his better-written stories of the period.

As for the circumstances of his asking her to do the edit (without even his final review), he may have been traveling for a few days, though from what I know of his biography it’s not easy to imagine where or why. More likely is that he had been awake for days, finishing up writing assignments to get the money to pay for their trip to Jamaica (this writing was done sometime between April 1941 and the end of June, when they left New York), and he was giving her this assignment to carry out while he collapsed into ten hours’ sleep. There’s no reason Campbell would have been in a rush to have the story; but Sturgeon was always in a rush to collect his payment, and all the more so if this was done just before their departure.

The story was significantly improved by being shortened. The published version is between 7,500 and 8,000 words (evidently 6,000 was not possible).

The narrator says of Séleen, “She looked like a Cartier illustration.” Edd Cartier was one of the finest fantasy artists of the era, and did many of the interior illustrations for
Unknown
(which changed its name to
Unknown Worlds
in late ’41); ultimately he did illustrate this story.

Patty in the story has the same name as Dorothe and Ted’s first child, who was no more than six months old when “The Hag Séleen” was written.

Magazine blurb (contents page): THE DARK, DANK MAGIC OF THE BAYOUS WAS BEYOND THE UNDERSTANDING OF MODERN ADULTS. IT TOOK A CHILD WITH A GIFT FOR RHYMING TO HANDLE THE HAG SÉLEEN.

“Killdozer!”:
First published in
Astounding Science-Fiction
, November 1944. Written early May, 1944. Later adapted for an ABC-TV “Suspense Movie,” directed by Jerry London and starring Clint Walker, first aired on February 2, 1974.

The purpose of these story notes is to make readily available to readers useful information about each story’s writing and publication,
including biographical and other influences that may be reflected in its content, comments the author has made about a story, at the time of writing or since, and the context of the story’s writing within the events of the author’s life and career. With this in mind, there is much that must be said about “Killdozer!” It draws heavily, of course, from Sturgeon’s experience as a bulldozer operator in the tropics in 1942 and 1943. In terms of money and acclaim, it was arguably the most successful story of the first decade of his career. And in Sturgeon’s own telling of his life story, it punctuates his longest bout of “writer’s block,” usually described by him (in interviews, and in the foreword to his 1971 collection
Sturgeon Is Alive and Well …
) as lasting for six years, 1940 to 1946, with “Killdozer!” a solitary interruption in the middle, 1943.

Close examination of documentary evidence, primarily copies of letters to and from Sturgeon during and after this period, allows a more accurate dating. He did continue to write as long as he was still in New York, which he left (in order to manage his uncle’s hotel at Treasure Beach on the island of Jamaica) on June 28, 1941. Although he and his wife expected that the hotel job and change of scene would make it easier for him to go on writing fiction, he did not do any writing until April of 1944, on St. Croix in the Virgin Islands, when he wrote a (probably mainstream, i.e. not aimed at the science fiction or fantasy market) short story
propagandizing in favor of the much misunderstood Nisei, or American-born Japs
. (Italicized phrases are quotes from Sturgeon, in this case from a letter writen to his mother on May 8, 1944.) This story immediately went to a new agent, Nannine Joseph, who was unable to sell it; the manuscript does not survive among Sturgeon’s papers.

The first week of May, 1944, while still completing “the Nisei story,” TS began “Killdozer!”, which he wrote in nine days and immediately sent to the science fiction editor who had published him regularly between 1939 and 1943. From a letter to his mother, Christine Hamilton Sturgeon, July 8, 1944:
When we were right at the end of the rope, in comes a check and a letter from Jack Campbell. The check was a godsend, but the letter is something that I’ll treasure for the rest of my life. I must have sold him thirty-five or
forty stories and never have I had such a missive from him. “I don’t know how I can place it or when I’ll be able to use it, but there, my friend, you have a hunk of story. I’m giving you our highest rate, which brings the check to $542.50. I’m glad you’re back in the field, and if you have any more with anything like this level of tenseness, send ’em along. I want ’em.”

In May or June Sturgeon wrote and sent his agent another story, “Operator—Please!”,
a slick-style woman’s angle number about a USO singer in the South Pacific who was walking on a cleared track by herself deep in the jungle and came on the bulldozer that was doing the work; argued
[with]
the operator because he wouldn’t let her ride; jumped on the machine when his back was turned; dropped the blade on him by accident, pinning his legs
. This story also didn’t sell and has been lost. Sturgeon’s frustration with his agent was the primary reason for his trip back to New York in October 1944; he subsequently found himself unable to sell or to write satisfactorily. He didn’t return to his family on St. Croix, or send them money, and in June 1945 Dorothe divorced him.

Although TS did write a few more stories in 1944 and early ’45, the breakthrough as he remembered it came with the next story he sold, “The Chromium Helmet,” completed at the end of 1945. So what he thought of as his “writer’s block” lasted from July ’41 to December ’45, punctuated by only one story that sold close to the time when it was written: “Killdozer!” in 1944.

How Ted became a ’dozer driver (abbreviated from a conversation between TS and Paul Williams, December 6, 1975):
So while we were in Jamaica, along came December the 7th, and Pearl Harbor, and here we were at the hotel, ninety miles away from Kingston, with gasoline supplies cut off and no chance of getting any guests out there at all. The Americans started building a very large base at Fort Simonds, and we went down there and applied for jobs. I ended up on the Jamaican payroll, handling mess halls and barracks, and a food warehouse. And finally a man came along, clearing up ground around the housing area, and driving a bulldozer. And I fell in love with that machine. So he let me get up on it, and I learned an awful lot. Then I was transferred from quarters and barracks to a gasoline station.
We serviced all kinds of equipment, and I got to know some of the American operators, and finally I got hired as a bulldozer operator. I was making more money than I’d ever seen in my life. Then when the base began to fold up, a guy came around recruiting for another job, in Puerto Rico at a place called Ensenada Honda, where they were building an enormous shipfitting plant, and a dry dock, and a landing field. And ultimately we moved over to St. Croix and I settled down to write
. Sturgeon worked in Puerto Rico as a bulldozer operator from August ’42 to December ’43, after which he worked for the Navy for a few months as a supply clerk and cost analyst. In April he and Dorothe and their two daughters moved to St. Croix.

The manuscript title of “Killdozer!” was “Daisy Etta.” In August 1945, recalling the experience of writing this story as
Worked like hell for nine days, wrote something after two and a half years of being dried up
, Sturgeon described it to his mother as
Complete justification for everything
. In a letter to his father, Edward Waldo, Feb. 27, 1946, he further reported:
The thing wrote itself! It was called KILLDOZER and after it I could write nothing else. It sold on sight for $542.50, and the editor thought so well of it that he cancelled his production schedule and had it in print within weeks, as the lead novel in his magazine, with a cover illustration. (The original oil painting for that cover now hangs in my living room.) The magazine hit the stands just as I arrived back in the States, and apparently caused quite a stir in the science-fiction crowd. Through this I met many people who have become valuable friends—including
[his roommate]
Stanton. Crown Publishing Co. released a new anthology of science-fiction last week. [The Best of Science Fiction.] A month ago, an advance copy was read by a science editor out in California who, on seeing KILLDOZER leading its section in the book, wrote me and asked me if I would take on this series of juveniles
. [A “novel series” called
Bob Haley of the Atomic Police
, that employed Sturgeon as a “for hire” writer in spring 1946.]
And Crown has just sent me a check for $155 for the reprint rights! In other words, what seemed like a mere temporary alleviation of my circumstances down in St. Croix and nothing more, has proved to be the focal point of a whole series of fine breaks
. And in two more letters
to his mother: March 25, 1946:
The original oil painting from the cover … is my proudest possession. Through that yarn I got in really solid with John Campbell, editor of
Astounding
and now an increasingly important man
. April 25, 1946:
By the way, got a call from a screen agent who has high hopes for KILLDOZER in Hollywood. Good ol’ KILLDOZER!

So the story also brought Sturgeon the first of what was to be a lifelong series of tantalizing (and, usually, disappointing) flirtations with the money and glory of Hollywood, in regard to his stories and novels and original scripts. In July 1970 (after Sturgeon had already seen two of his scripts become well-known Star Trek episodes) he wrote to Tom Snell at Columbia Studios, apparently a producer who’d expressed interest to a director who told Sturgeon he wanted to film this story:
I have been called a “visual” writer; KILLDOZER is far and away the most cinematographic piece of prose I have ever done. It has been optioned before, over the years. The last time was CBS’ Cinema 100. Just before first-draft screenplay it became a victim of Sen. Pastore’s famous speech on violence in TV. The people out here were all for going ahead, but back east CBS got cold feet and killed every one of their works-in-progress that might possibly be called violent. I honestly do not think that the kind of violence which occurs in KILLDOZER is the sort of thing the good Senator had in mind. KILLDOZER is a fable about man vs the machine, and it ends in a fine climax of victory for man. But you can’t argue with cold feet—not in television-land, anyway
.

Later in this letter Sturgeon said,
We’ve even got a class-A heavy equipment operator who knows construction machinery as well as he does a script—especially this script. Namely, me
. And then he provided a compact treatment:
KILLDOZER is the story of eight men alone on an island with a million dollars’ worth of heavy earth-moving equipment and the assignment of carving an airstrip in ten days’ time. One of the machines—an 18–ton Caterpillar D-7
—
gets a life of its own, vast intelligence, and the obsessive desire to kill men. It gets five of them; the survivors “kill” it
.

The 1974 TV movie that did get made was commemorated in the April 1974 issue of a Marvel Comics comic book called
Worlds
Unknown presents the Thing Called KILLDOZER
. (“based on the spine-tingling shocker by Theodore Sturgeon, author of ‘It!’ ”) The story and film have since given their name to at least one rock and roll group.

In 1972 actor Anthony Quinn called TS to ask if screen rights to “Killdozer!” were available—but he had just sold it to Universal Television. On 4/4/78 Sturgeon wrote to Quinn, saying,
They finally rejected my first draft
[screenplay]
and produced one of the worst “Movies of the Week” I have ever seen
.

Editor’s blurb from the original magazine publication: STURGEON’S BEEN MISSING FOR A LONG TIME NOW; HE’S BEEN DOING HEAVY CONSTRUCTION WORK. THIS YARN HE GOT OUT OF THAT EXPERIENCE; IT WILL, CERTAINLY, BE LONG REMEMBERED.

In 1959 “Killdozer!” was first included in a book of Sturgeon stories, a paperback,
Aliens 4
. At first the publisher was going to call the book
Killdozer
but they changed their mind, and Sturgeon expressed his chagrin to his agent at the time, Sterling Lord, in a letter dated 2/25/59:
Not too bad a title, but it irritates me on two counts. They say the title must categorize the book; now, that’s just stupid. There are more impulse-buyers who can’t stand s-f than those who look for it. They say KILLDOZER sounds like a detective novel. Well, dandy. What’s wrong with that? In addition, the only similarity between my stuff and what is usually called s-f is that my stuff has appeared mostly in s-f magazines—not a subtle distinction at all when you think about it. If it’s the real s-f cognoscenti they’re after, the much-lauded KILLDOZER will pull ’em in better than any new title
. (Sturgeon had tried unsuccessfully in 1947 to get Simon & Schuster to publish “Killdozer!” as “a separate novel.”)