Exhibit Notes: Theodore Sturgeon

Lilly call number: PS3545.A38

Items in the exhibit:

• The Dreaming Jewels
• Without Sorcery
• More Than Human
• More Than Human - proof copy
• "Amok Time"

Theodore Sturgeon is probably one of the lesser known writers in the exhibit.  His work has not been continuously reprinted like Bradbury or Asimov.  His stories have not been consistently turned into movies like Dick.  He is not even heavily connected with the episodes of Star Trek that he wrote, like Ellison is with "The City on the Edge of Forever."  When Becky read through my labels for the exhibit, when I would comment about an author (such as Sturgeon) being unknown outside sci-fi fandom, she would be surprised, saying she's always known who they are, but then she knows sci-fi.

"We sell bottles with things in them."

Well, for those of you who have never heard of Theodore Sturgeon, I will say one thing to you: I feel sorry for you.  I had never read anything by him before working on this exhibit, though I was extremely familiar with one of the episodes he wrote for Star Trek.  I read a few of his stories in the books I'd picked for the exhibit and I was hooked.  One of the nice things about science fiction is that most sci-fi writers do short stories and lots of them.  And short stories are, well, short.  So if you want an introduction to a new sci-fi writer, just reading a few of his stories doesn't take very long.  I began with a few stories in Without Sorcery and was so pleased that I was inspired to buy the book, which required a trip to a used book website because Sturgeon's collections haven't been reprinted.  I began with "Shottle Bop," which I chose because the picture at the beginning of the story amused me.  His stories can be surprisingly light-hearted, which is not necessarily usual for science fiction, at least not what I've read.

"It is the pon farr..."

One of the things I knew before choosing the focus of my exhibit was that I wanted to be able to include Star Trek scripts.  I'm a born and bred Trekkie and to not take advantage of the large complement of scripts the Lilly had would have been painful.  Luckily for me, good sci-fi writers wrote for original Trek.  Sturgeon wrote two, and the one in the exhibit is the more famous.  It deals with pon farr, the Vulcan mating drive and rituals.  While I hope that this exhibit might inspire people who have not read science fiction before to give it a try, I have absolutely no expectation that people who see the exhibit will want to watch Star Trek after seeing it.  But it means a lot to me, and it will mean a lot to the sci-fi fans that come through the door.  It has truly been a treat to put together an exhibit that has had so much personal meaning for me, because science fiction was such a large part of my childhood and upbringing.