gengelcox's review
3.0
**** Cargo • (1940) • novelette
**** Shottle Bop • (1941) • novelette
*** Yesterday Was Monday • (1941) • short story
**** Brat • (1941) • short story
** The Anonymous • novelette
** Two Sidecars • short story
**** Microcosmic God • (1941) • novelette
** The Haunt • (1941) • short story
**** Completely Automatic • (1941) • short story
*** Poker Face • (1941) • short story
*** Nightmare Island • (1941) • novelette
** The Purple Light • (1941) • short story
** Artnan Process • (1941) • novelette
* Biddiver • (1941) • novelette
** The Golden Egg • (1941) • novelette
*** Two Percent Inspiration • (1941) • short story
*** The Jumper • (1942) • short story
Still early in Sturgeon's career, these stories showcase his development but many are flawed--rather than the insight into character, and the relationship between people, that Sturgeon became known for, most of these stories rely on twists or idiot plots to propel the narrative. Worthwhile reading for those seeking to understand how writers develop, however.
“Cargo” — A sweet little fantasy tale that takes advantage of Sturgeon’s history in the merchant marine. A gunrunner ship takes on a new cargo and something is wrong, or is it right? I felt it a bit long for the plot, but since so much of it is the details of how a tanker is run, and the there’s the interaction between the officers and the crew and the cargo, I suppose it needed to be that length. Enjoyable.
“Shuttle Bop” — Compared with “Cargo,” this has everything in it but the kitchen sink, and that’s implied. What starts off as a fairly mundane magic shop story—a fantasy trope about a mysterious shop that sells you anything, but what you wanted may not be what you need, or vice versa—transforms itself over time into a ghost story, then a confidence story, and then finally a tale of comeuppance. Like “Cargo,” what drives this is the details: the asides of the two ghosts that make up the main character’s business associates—a business idea and side characters that a modern author would have made an entire novel series out of. Enjoyable, but the pacing seems off, or at least, seems muddied, for the middle section goes on in such a way to distance the setup and payoff of the revenge theme, which seems to shift from the beginning—the jilted lover—to the end focused on his pride of place before his old friends.
"Yesterday Was Monday" — The idea centers around the idea that we are all actors in a grand play who aren’t aware of that fact and there’s lots of “folks” behind the scenes making sure things run smoothly. The protagonist somehow gets out of sync and jumps into the next act before its ready, sending him on a journey of discovery about the workings of the world. I enjoyed it, but felt it a slight story and not one of Sturgeon’s best by far.
“Brat” — A sweet little fantasy that starts off more like a Thorne Smith story and over time becomes a James Thurber story. The difference: Smith was a cynical writer, an heir of the Damon Runyon school where people will be people, warts and all, and we should be laughing at them, while Thurber also thought people would be people, and he found them amusing, but for their foibles, not their faults. The twist in this tale is the change in the characters—all but for the protagonist, but in the end, you know it’s coming for him, too. Recommended.
“The Anonymous” — Although unsold at the time, it is actually a fairly good story, a take on the old fantasy trope of “be careful what you wish for” made most famous in “The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W. Jacobs. Gabe is a handsome fellow who falls for the one girl, Chloe, who treats him less than adoringly, but she has a problem: she doesn’t know when to stop, so when a gypsy fortune teller gives her a wish, she ends up wishing for Gabe to look ordinary—so much so, that he can’t even be remembered by people who saw him just a few minutes before. When Chloe goes to correct her mistake with a second wish, everything comes to an even worse end. The problem with this story isn’t the plot, but that Sturgeon takes so long to tell it. The setup of how Gabe is oh so handsome and how Chloe doesn’t understand how she lands him takes at least half of the verbiage, so when you finally get to some scenes and plot, you’re almost to the end. Condensing this to a tighter story would have made this a perfect Twilight Zone episode.
"Two Sidecars" — A bit overly dramatic, but what Sturgeon was trying to do was capture the mindset of an alcoholic, so if it’s a bit maudlin and drawn out, then it’s a success. The plot, what there is of it, is pretty simple. Man wakes up in his convertible after driving it off the road, has a hell of a hangover but wants to get revenge on the woman who dumped him and the man she dumped him for, but he needs a least a couple of drinks before he can do so. Two drinks? Well, at least two drinks at once, again, and again, and again. And thus the story. It’s ok, but nothing to go looking for.
"Microcosmic God" — Again, Sturgeon’s stories from this time take awhile to develop, and the beginnings are rarely about show and all about tell—the very thing that modern writers are cautioned never to do. It’s not the lack of “scenes” or “action,” this telling thing, or even that the author is telling you a story, which works alright, but that Sturgeon is basically telling you the setup of the world, how things are different from what you know, prior to getting to the actual story. What makes it somewhat palatable is that Sturgeon had a style that made this kind of tell at least interesting rather than just dry. His descriptions of both Kidder and Conant establish their personalities fairly quickly, and the buildup of how Kidder makes his unusual discoveries, while not really feasible, at least is portrayed with panache (later, George R. R. Martin was to achieve something a little more feasible with “Sandkings”). And once the actual plot starts, then the story gets its action and its impetus to the end, with both a comeuppance and a warning. Still, I’d like it more if that early part could have been revealed through story rather than just dumped on the reader.
“The Haunt” — From the very beginning, this story is problematic for its misogyny. The protagonist, Bill, proposes to Miriam, and when she turns him down, he says to himself, “I’m going to shake her off her high horse, by all that’s unholy, if I have to kill her to do it.” Dude, no wonder she doesn’t want you, if that’s your attitude. So the protagonist cries in his beer with a friend who’s got some mechanical talent and they decide to hook up some equipment to make it seem like a house is haunted to scare this women so that Bill can rescue her. (My feeling is that if Sturgeon had been true to the characters, Miriam wouldn’t have any problems rescuing herself.) It gets worse from there, because of course the house is really haunted and Bill does rescue Miriam and then of course she agrees to marry him. Ugh. For the last couple of pages, I wanted a twist so badly, something to upset the applecart, but it never arrived. Not recommended.
“Completely Automatic” — A chemical engineering story. The framing device is ok—probably unnecessary, but it allows Sturgeon to comment on the story itself without having to work that into the story. The story itself is setup nicely, using the old standby of the new kid on board to justify the protagonists difference from all the old hands, complete with a desperation that none of the others might have felt. It’s not necessarily an exciting story, and I’m not entirely sure of the chemistry, not being of that persuasion, but it all seemed reasonable.
"Poker Face" — I’m not sure I entirely followed this story, which is somewhat about the fourth dimension, duration, but is really about conformity and non-conformity. For one, I’m not sure I cared for the set-up as the poker game, because I kept wondering why Face would reveal himself this way, and then I was unconvinced by the reveal, which made no sense of that had been said before. Still, it’s Sturgeon, and so it wasn’t awkward to read. I’m not sure I can recommend it, though.
“Nightmare Island” — There’s a problem with the narration early on in this, in the framing story between the American and the Governor, where Sturgeon seemed to have forgotten whose point of view he was in for a bit. I’m not sure why he needed the framing device as it is, but that seems to be the style for most of these earlier stories, where Sturgeon doesn’t just tell the tale, but writes about someone else telling the tale. The story itself is a bit more fantasy than science fiction, as it posits an earthbound organism that could not exist given physics. Otherwise, it’s an interesting adventure story.
“The Purple Light” — Another engineering story, but this one a speculation about nuclear engineering powering things. This one is problematic because the ending relies on knowledge that the reader doesn’t have. Sure, the reader understands that this is a future that is powered by atomic energy, and Sturgeon places an indication earlier in the story that these power plants are everywhere, but it’s one thing for a reader to understand that a small one person rocket is powered like that and extend it to even smaller bits of equipment. So, flawed, although interesting.
“Artnan Process” — An adventure story, as the science is pretty much suspect. I’d say its atypical Sturgeon, although it shares some similarities with later stories, just not as done as well here. The plot revolves around how the Martians are able to spy upon the Earth ship, and Sturgeon makes some bull about how the Martians are unable to determine truth from, well, not a lie, but gibberish. Then there’s the Artnan’s themselves, and the plot makes even less sense there. Not recommended.
“Biddiver” — Another SF adventure story, and the science in this one is the worst I’ve seen yet from Sturgeon. Why does entering the “Heaviside” do one thing to Biddiver and something else to the two brothers? Sturgeon’s best when he does character stories, but none of the characters here are interesting, and the change that occurred to the characters was driven by the idiot plot, rather than anything they actually did or wanted. Even the ending, with its comeuppance revenge seems just tacked on, rather than what the story had been leading to. In some ways, the story feels like an unholy marriage of two plots—the brothers and their rivalry, Biddiver and the instant wealth (a point that really just gets dropped). Don’t try to parse this one; pass it by.
“The Golden Egg” — An incredibly strange story, as you have no idea where Sturgeon plans to take this as he builds up the idea of this incredibly powerful, perfect being, who then finally decides what it’s like to be a man. Then the story emerges, and it’s a hoary tale of the ineffable nature of woman, and how a male can’t be perfect or else a woman won’t be happy with him. Like any cliche, there may be a grain of truth in this belief, but the expression of it here in this story is horribly unbelievable, even with the Egg’s perfect understanding. Sturgeon would later have a much more nuanced understanding of people, especially the relationship between lovers, that this early tale is hard to see as his.
“Two-Percent Inspiration” — Another SF adventure story, but a stronger one this time. The most awkward thing about it is the recursive nature of the young man enamored of SF and the description of the E. E. “Doc” Smith story that the man reads, although it does give Sturgeon a chance to expound upon the difference between science fantasy/adventure and real science, which he then promptly undercuts in the last paragraph. Oh, well. The plot itself revolves around a reveal that I could see coming, but still worked within the context of the story.
“The Jumper” — A war story with a bit of pseudo-scientific fantasy twist. The best parts of the story are in the early sections where the narrator relates how he came to be in a German POW camp and the introduction of Richter, the sadistic young brown shirt whose pleasure it was to inflict cruelty on the prisoners. The intro of the fantasy element is good, but the follow-up where they use this on Richter strains even the pseudoscience of the explanation. The ending is exciting, but leaves you wondering just how the narrator came to be able to tell you this story. Interesting, but flawed.
The story notes by Paul Williams are wonderful and provide an insight into how Sturgeon himself viewed many of these stories (he seemed to dislike most of them, calling them journeyman work), as well as placing them in context of Sturgeon's early output.
**** Shottle Bop • (1941) • novelette
*** Yesterday Was Monday • (1941) • short story
**** Brat • (1941) • short story
** The Anonymous • novelette
** Two Sidecars • short story
**** Microcosmic God • (1941) • novelette
** The Haunt • (1941) • short story
**** Completely Automatic • (1941) • short story
*** Poker Face • (1941) • short story
*** Nightmare Island • (1941) • novelette
** The Purple Light • (1941) • short story
** Artnan Process • (1941) • novelette
* Biddiver • (1941) • novelette
** The Golden Egg • (1941) • novelette
*** Two Percent Inspiration • (1941) • short story
*** The Jumper • (1942) • short story
Still early in Sturgeon's career, these stories showcase his development but many are flawed--rather than the insight into character, and the relationship between people, that Sturgeon became known for, most of these stories rely on twists or idiot plots to propel the narrative. Worthwhile reading for those seeking to understand how writers develop, however.
“Cargo” — A sweet little fantasy tale that takes advantage of Sturgeon’s history in the merchant marine. A gunrunner ship takes on a new cargo and something is wrong, or is it right? I felt it a bit long for the plot, but since so much of it is the details of how a tanker is run, and the there’s the interaction between the officers and the crew and the cargo, I suppose it needed to be that length. Enjoyable.
“Shuttle Bop” — Compared with “Cargo,” this has everything in it but the kitchen sink, and that’s implied. What starts off as a fairly mundane magic shop story—a fantasy trope about a mysterious shop that sells you anything, but what you wanted may not be what you need, or vice versa—transforms itself over time into a ghost story, then a confidence story, and then finally a tale of comeuppance. Like “Cargo,” what drives this is the details: the asides of the two ghosts that make up the main character’s business associates—a business idea and side characters that a modern author would have made an entire novel series out of. Enjoyable, but the pacing seems off, or at least, seems muddied, for the middle section goes on in such a way to distance the setup and payoff of the revenge theme, which seems to shift from the beginning—the jilted lover—to the end focused on his pride of place before his old friends.
"Yesterday Was Monday" — The idea centers around the idea that we are all actors in a grand play who aren’t aware of that fact and there’s lots of “folks” behind the scenes making sure things run smoothly. The protagonist somehow gets out of sync and jumps into the next act before its ready, sending him on a journey of discovery about the workings of the world. I enjoyed it, but felt it a slight story and not one of Sturgeon’s best by far.
“Brat” — A sweet little fantasy that starts off more like a Thorne Smith story and over time becomes a James Thurber story. The difference: Smith was a cynical writer, an heir of the Damon Runyon school where people will be people, warts and all, and we should be laughing at them, while Thurber also thought people would be people, and he found them amusing, but for their foibles, not their faults. The twist in this tale is the change in the characters—all but for the protagonist, but in the end, you know it’s coming for him, too. Recommended.
“The Anonymous” — Although unsold at the time, it is actually a fairly good story, a take on the old fantasy trope of “be careful what you wish for” made most famous in “The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W. Jacobs. Gabe is a handsome fellow who falls for the one girl, Chloe, who treats him less than adoringly, but she has a problem: she doesn’t know when to stop, so when a gypsy fortune teller gives her a wish, she ends up wishing for Gabe to look ordinary—so much so, that he can’t even be remembered by people who saw him just a few minutes before. When Chloe goes to correct her mistake with a second wish, everything comes to an even worse end. The problem with this story isn’t the plot, but that Sturgeon takes so long to tell it. The setup of how Gabe is oh so handsome and how Chloe doesn’t understand how she lands him takes at least half of the verbiage, so when you finally get to some scenes and plot, you’re almost to the end. Condensing this to a tighter story would have made this a perfect Twilight Zone episode.
"Two Sidecars" — A bit overly dramatic, but what Sturgeon was trying to do was capture the mindset of an alcoholic, so if it’s a bit maudlin and drawn out, then it’s a success. The plot, what there is of it, is pretty simple. Man wakes up in his convertible after driving it off the road, has a hell of a hangover but wants to get revenge on the woman who dumped him and the man she dumped him for, but he needs a least a couple of drinks before he can do so. Two drinks? Well, at least two drinks at once, again, and again, and again. And thus the story. It’s ok, but nothing to go looking for.
"Microcosmic God" — Again, Sturgeon’s stories from this time take awhile to develop, and the beginnings are rarely about show and all about tell—the very thing that modern writers are cautioned never to do. It’s not the lack of “scenes” or “action,” this telling thing, or even that the author is telling you a story, which works alright, but that Sturgeon is basically telling you the setup of the world, how things are different from what you know, prior to getting to the actual story. What makes it somewhat palatable is that Sturgeon had a style that made this kind of tell at least interesting rather than just dry. His descriptions of both Kidder and Conant establish their personalities fairly quickly, and the buildup of how Kidder makes his unusual discoveries, while not really feasible, at least is portrayed with panache (later, George R. R. Martin was to achieve something a little more feasible with “Sandkings”). And once the actual plot starts, then the story gets its action and its impetus to the end, with both a comeuppance and a warning. Still, I’d like it more if that early part could have been revealed through story rather than just dumped on the reader.
“The Haunt” — From the very beginning, this story is problematic for its misogyny. The protagonist, Bill, proposes to Miriam, and when she turns him down, he says to himself, “I’m going to shake her off her high horse, by all that’s unholy, if I have to kill her to do it.” Dude, no wonder she doesn’t want you, if that’s your attitude. So the protagonist cries in his beer with a friend who’s got some mechanical talent and they decide to hook up some equipment to make it seem like a house is haunted to scare this women so that Bill can rescue her. (My feeling is that if Sturgeon had been true to the characters, Miriam wouldn’t have any problems rescuing herself.) It gets worse from there, because of course the house is really haunted and Bill does rescue Miriam and then of course she agrees to marry him. Ugh. For the last couple of pages, I wanted a twist so badly, something to upset the applecart, but it never arrived. Not recommended.
“Completely Automatic” — A chemical engineering story. The framing device is ok—probably unnecessary, but it allows Sturgeon to comment on the story itself without having to work that into the story. The story itself is setup nicely, using the old standby of the new kid on board to justify the protagonists difference from all the old hands, complete with a desperation that none of the others might have felt. It’s not necessarily an exciting story, and I’m not entirely sure of the chemistry, not being of that persuasion, but it all seemed reasonable.
"Poker Face" — I’m not sure I entirely followed this story, which is somewhat about the fourth dimension, duration, but is really about conformity and non-conformity. For one, I’m not sure I cared for the set-up as the poker game, because I kept wondering why Face would reveal himself this way, and then I was unconvinced by the reveal, which made no sense of that had been said before. Still, it’s Sturgeon, and so it wasn’t awkward to read. I’m not sure I can recommend it, though.
“Nightmare Island” — There’s a problem with the narration early on in this, in the framing story between the American and the Governor, where Sturgeon seemed to have forgotten whose point of view he was in for a bit. I’m not sure why he needed the framing device as it is, but that seems to be the style for most of these earlier stories, where Sturgeon doesn’t just tell the tale, but writes about someone else telling the tale. The story itself is a bit more fantasy than science fiction, as it posits an earthbound organism that could not exist given physics. Otherwise, it’s an interesting adventure story.
“The Purple Light” — Another engineering story, but this one a speculation about nuclear engineering powering things. This one is problematic because the ending relies on knowledge that the reader doesn’t have. Sure, the reader understands that this is a future that is powered by atomic energy, and Sturgeon places an indication earlier in the story that these power plants are everywhere, but it’s one thing for a reader to understand that a small one person rocket is powered like that and extend it to even smaller bits of equipment. So, flawed, although interesting.
“Artnan Process” — An adventure story, as the science is pretty much suspect. I’d say its atypical Sturgeon, although it shares some similarities with later stories, just not as done as well here. The plot revolves around how the Martians are able to spy upon the Earth ship, and Sturgeon makes some bull about how the Martians are unable to determine truth from, well, not a lie, but gibberish. Then there’s the Artnan’s themselves, and the plot makes even less sense there. Not recommended.
“Biddiver” — Another SF adventure story, and the science in this one is the worst I’ve seen yet from Sturgeon. Why does entering the “Heaviside” do one thing to Biddiver and something else to the two brothers? Sturgeon’s best when he does character stories, but none of the characters here are interesting, and the change that occurred to the characters was driven by the idiot plot, rather than anything they actually did or wanted. Even the ending, with its comeuppance revenge seems just tacked on, rather than what the story had been leading to. In some ways, the story feels like an unholy marriage of two plots—the brothers and their rivalry, Biddiver and the instant wealth (a point that really just gets dropped). Don’t try to parse this one; pass it by.
“The Golden Egg” — An incredibly strange story, as you have no idea where Sturgeon plans to take this as he builds up the idea of this incredibly powerful, perfect being, who then finally decides what it’s like to be a man. Then the story emerges, and it’s a hoary tale of the ineffable nature of woman, and how a male can’t be perfect or else a woman won’t be happy with him. Like any cliche, there may be a grain of truth in this belief, but the expression of it here in this story is horribly unbelievable, even with the Egg’s perfect understanding. Sturgeon would later have a much more nuanced understanding of people, especially the relationship between lovers, that this early tale is hard to see as his.
“Two-Percent Inspiration” — Another SF adventure story, but a stronger one this time. The most awkward thing about it is the recursive nature of the young man enamored of SF and the description of the E. E. “Doc” Smith story that the man reads, although it does give Sturgeon a chance to expound upon the difference between science fantasy/adventure and real science, which he then promptly undercuts in the last paragraph. Oh, well. The plot itself revolves around a reveal that I could see coming, but still worked within the context of the story.
“The Jumper” — A war story with a bit of pseudo-scientific fantasy twist. The best parts of the story are in the early sections where the narrator relates how he came to be in a German POW camp and the introduction of Richter, the sadistic young brown shirt whose pleasure it was to inflict cruelty on the prisoners. The intro of the fantasy element is good, but the follow-up where they use this on Richter strains even the pseudoscience of the explanation. The ending is exciting, but leaves you wondering just how the narrator came to be able to tell you this story. Interesting, but flawed.
The story notes by Paul Williams are wonderful and provide an insight into how Sturgeon himself viewed many of these stories (he seemed to dislike most of them, calling them journeyman work), as well as placing them in context of Sturgeon's early output.
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