Sturgeon Is Alive and Well

by Theodore Sturgeon

Eleven stories first published from 1954 to 1971:
Contents:
To Here and the Easel (1954)
Slow Sculpture (1970)
It's You! (1970)
Take Care of Joey (1971)
Crate (1970)
The Girl Who Knew What They Meant (1970)
Jorry's Gap (1968)
It Was Nothing—Really! (1969)
Brownshoes (1969)
Uncle Fremmis (1970)
The Patterns of Dorne (1970)
Suicide (1970)

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Short Stories, Science Fiction Fantasy, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Collections

224 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) is considered one of the godfathers of contemporary science fiction and dark fantasy. The author of numerous acclaimed short stories and novels, among them the classics More Than Human, Venus Plus X, and To Marry Medusa, Sturgeon also wrote for television and holds among his credits two episodes of the original 1960s Star Trek series, for which he created the Vulcan mating ritual and the expression "Live long and prosper." He is also credited as the inspiration for Kurt Vonnegut's recurring fictional character Kilgore Trout.

Sturgeon is the recipient of the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the International Fantasy Award. In 2000, he was posthumously honored with a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of several collections of Sturgeon's short fiction which includes his name in the title; it was published by Putnam's in 1971 with a nifty blue Paul Lehr cover. The title refers to his lack of appearances in recent years in the sf magazines of the day, and I think that overall, it's a rather minor entry in his bibliography. It includes a dozen stories, all but one of which originally appeared 1968-'70. The exception is the longest story in the book, To Here and the Easel, which was reprinted from a 1954 volume of Frederik Pohl's Star original anthology series. It's not a bad story, though not among his best. The other noteworthy inclusion is Slow Sculpture, from Galaxy magazine's February 1970 issue. It's a very moving piece, a terrific story, but the most mysterious thing is that in 1971 it won the Nebula Award as the best novelette published in the field in 1970 and it also won the Hugo Award for best in the short story category. (They're different things; it'd be like a sprinter getting two gold medals in two different events for only running one race.) The other ten stories are all reprinted from magazines Knight and Adam, publications that existed because they featured photographs of young ladies who weren't wearing clothes. There's no genre content in most of the stories, for the most part personal-relationship pieces which seem to have been written hastily. Some are funny, some have aged poorly, there are some good bits and a few duds.

[Baal Of · Rating 2 out of 5]

I went in to this fully expecting to like it, and I was sorely disappointed. Most of the ideas that Sturgeon builds around were in my estimation either bland and boring, buried beneath his literary pretensions, or left unexplored. I didn't find any of his characters particularly compelling, which according to his self-hype is exactly what makes a good story. And my god those endings sucked almost across the board. The most widely acclaimed story seems to be "Slow Sculpture" with a bonsai analogy to a relationship, and I fucking hated it. The worst one might be "Uncle Fremmis" with the utterly stupid idea of the uncle who keeps things going by hitting them in the right spot, including people, and it all wraps up with the sentence "Then I go back to him and he fetches me another good swift kick in the ass." Are you fucking kidding me? The whole story is building up to the idea that a kick in the ass really works? Lame, stupid, fucking irritating. I think there was one story that I thought was decent, and then he ruined with another crappy ending. I can't be arsed to go back and figure out which one that was.

Now I just have to decide whether to keep those other 5 or so paperbacks on my shelf from that big box my friend gave me a few years back. I should probably at least try one more. I guess. I just won't set my expectations too high.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Graduating from seminary in New York, I moved my stuff back to Valeria Laube's home in Illinois, flew to Norway to visit family, then returned to stay with Roy Laube in East Rogers Park, Chicago while looking for an apartment.

Finding an apartment took about an hour of the two of us walking about, looking into a couple of buildings with posted "for rent" signs, picking the first that fit the projected budget of $150 per month. Boy, what a mistake that was! The building, on the corner of Ashland and Morse, was okay, but the immediate neighborhood was sordid. Sure, there was the No Exit Cafe within three blocks and a Jewel only two blocks away, but Morse Ave. had been allowed to decay and my corner was a mile or so from the Loyola University campus where all the action at that time was. Besides, except for Roy, I had fallen out of contact with my old high school friends, having been living on the east coast for four years and away to school for nine. Ah, it was a lonely time, a time before computers and the internet, a time even before VCRs--besides, I had no television, no tape player, no phonograph, just a lousy clock radio and . . . books.

Yes, books. My major improvement to the apartment was to install bookshelves--not an easy task as the walls were cinderblock, but lead plugs did the job. And, fortunately, as it took a few weeks to find a first job, there was a junk store on my very block, a junk store that had used paperbacks for under a dollar. That is where I picked up Sturgeon Is Alive and Well, a rather safe bet as Sturgeon is a rather dependable writer.

[Thannasset · Rating 4 out of 5]

Please please pick up something by Sturgeon if you haven't yet--and here's a very good place to start. Samples of his work from many eras of his writing life. Includes my personal
winner for 'best of Sturgeon'--the novelette or short story
'Slow Sculpture'. Excellent horror stories in here also.
Man can write a clumsy word, especially when he's in his '20s, but can't see that he wrote a bad word.

Thannasset

[Lucy Batson · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's not hard to see why this collection has been out of print for so long: because it's full of some of the most mid stories Sturgeon had written. This is extremely skippable, and you're better off seeking out Sturgeon's actually good work, such as the outstanding "The Man Who Lost The Sea"

[Leew49 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent collection of science fiction and other short stories by an under-appreciated writer. The title is a reference to Sturgeon's long periods of apparent writer's block, mentioned in the Foreword and undoubtedly alluded to in the novella "To Here and the Easel." Sturgeon points out that his notorious fallow periods were usually followed by times of great productivity, during which he might write a short story in a day or less. I read that Jack Kerouac wrote his novel ON THE ROAD in a short creative burst, and I suspect that both writers spent a lot of time composing in their heads before sitting down at their writing desks.

ALIVE AND WELL is not all science fiction; this collection is about human relationships that sometimes are made more understandable in a science fiction framework, but it is the relationships that matter. In Sturgeon's words: "You can not write good fiction about ideas, You can only write good fiction about people."

Many of the relationships in these stories are doomed to failure. "Jerry's Gap" is about complete lack of communication at what proves to be a turning point in a young man's life. "It's You!"--a sentence which bookends the story itself--is about what at first seems to be an idyllic love affair which collapses under its own weight. One of the darkest points of view on communication is found in "The Girl Who Knew What They Meant." There are some more optimistic stories, notably "Slow Sculpture," "Crate," and "Suicide," which mixes a dark title with a more hopeful outcome.

Other recurrent themes are the need to ask the question that no one else has thought of, the belief that change is not only desirable but necessary if civilization is to flourish, and the contrary force of vested interests opposing bold new ideas. In more than one story we meet a brilliant loner with training in more than one discipline who does ask the next question and finds himself an outsider in a world controlled by people and institutions who have become conservative in the extreme, strenuously opposed to new ideas and hence to progress.

Sturgeon balances his pessimistic view of authority with a heroically optimistic view of the individual. His protagonists bring light to a dark world and do good for humanity over humanity's objections.

Having just finished PREMONITION by Michael Lewis (August 2021), I am struck by how much Sturgeon's themes are reflected in real life.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wish I could find more classic sci-fi writers that I like that write like Sturgeon. Imagine this, the majority of his stories are genre sci-fi, but it features believable and interesting characters. This short story collection has some really great stories and in retrospect, I don't think any of them are genre stories. The only story I really didn't like was the first one "To Here and the Easel". Two stories are tied for my favorite "It's You!" and "Take Care of Joey". If you want to read some beautifully written short stories, this is a wonderful collection.

[Mark Isaak · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of good short stories; as always, some are better than others. "Slow Sculpture" alone is worth picking up the book for. People thirsting for science fiction will be disappointed; only about half the book is science fiction or fantasy, and of those, only two are what I would call hard science fiction. Three of the stories dealt with the problem of releasing a world-changing new technology, which I thought was a bit of overkill. All of the stories deal primarily with characters, though, and Sturgeon's writing style always shines.

[Jemiah Jefferson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished at last, after perhaps 6 years between the fifth-to-last story and the end of the book. What can be said? Sturgeon writes some of the best, most emotionally astute, hilarious, brilliant speculative fiction of all time, and this collection of short stories is a spectacular place to start. Very highest recommendations.

[Joan Wendland · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed my life. Short stories that put us in touch with our own humanity and the humanity in others.

[Victor Medina · Rating 3 out of 5]

este libro contiene casi nada de ciencia ficcion o cualquier cosa aledaña, para los que como yo pensaban que tendria, quisiera haber escogido cualquier otro libro del autor aunque algunos cuentos valen la pena y ninguno es malo en si.

To here and the easel
la primer historia creo que es la mejor tiene un ritmo muy loco que va de la mano con lo que esta pasando en la historia, me parece que el final es demasiado flojo y creo que eso pasa con la mayoria de historias en el libro.

slow sculpture
el primer cientifico genio que va a salvar a al humanidad del sistema actual con su brillantes y la primera chica hermosa que es un prototipo de la pixie maniac dream girl, hay buenos dialogos y reflexiones interesantes en este cuento pero no mucho mas.

it´s you
solo una historia moderna para su epoca, sobre una relacion; bien ejecutada pero no hay mucho que ver

take care of joey
un poco de weird ficition que al final resulta explicado simplemente, de nuevo una historia bien ejecutada que no puedes decir que es mala pero tampoco buena y de nuevo en el final es cuando queda atrapada en esta situacion

crate
primer atisbo de ciencia ficcion que el resumen del libro en la contraportada me hizo pensar tendrian todas las historias y el segundo cuento que creo es bueno no tanto como el primero y ademas como ya dije con un final flojo flojito

the girl who knew what they meant
segunda chica proto maniac girl que se sacrifica por su galan patan

jorrys gap
esta es una historia que al principio pense que tendria algo de weird fiction por todas las coincidencias que el protagonista experimentaba como una profecia, al final eso no tenia nada de raro solo eran cosas que pasaban y ya cosas comunes, termina siendo solo una historia de moral, de traumas heredados de la familia, una buena por ser un cuento corto si esta historia fuera un libro seria de las basuras que las escuelas hacen leer a los adolescentes para que le hagan caso a sus papas y no usen drogas.

it was nothing really
segundo genio que salavara al mundo del sistema actual con sus inventos y brillantes

brownshoes
tercer genio con un invento brillante que destruira al sistema, pero este tiene un poco mas de merito ya que se combina con la historia it´s you un poco y con el tema y los dilemas de - el fin justifica los medios

uncle fremmis
de nuevo una historia que empieza con un persoanje interesante y yo creyendo que sera un cuento de weird fiction pero al final solo quitan al genio brillante y lo cambian por una persona normal con un don y con este cambiara el sistema actual que mantiene a casi toda la humanidad en condiciones que pueden ser mejores, mcuho mejores

the patterns of dorne
gran titulo, buena historia final un poco flojo, ahora son dos cientificos brillantes y su computadora aun mas brillante los que aseguran que el sistema cambiara.

suicide
un suicida salta y despues escala, una buena historia tal vez con una pagina o dos de mas

[Dominick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an uneven but never exceptional collection of short stories by Sturgeon. Given that Sturgeon is one of the SF greats, this is actually pretty disappointing. With one exception--the longest story in the book--these were all written within a year or two of the collection's publication, and though they are decent enough, they suggest a writer whose powers are on the wane. The most effective are the least serious--the whimsical "Uncle Fremmis" (about a man who knows just how to slack anything--including people--to temporarily get it functioning properly again) or "It Was Nothing--Really!" (about a guy whose investigation of the phenomenon of perforated paper not always tearing along the perforations--the theoretically weakest part of the paper--leads to a world-changing discovery). The other stories adopt more serious tones but are correspondingly less successful. Several aren't even SF or fantasy but rather anemic realist stories (e.g. the kid who has a bad day that puts him on the wrong path, the guy who finds the ideal woman but leaves her because she changes who he is). The longest--and oldest--story here, "To Here and the Easel," seems to have something of a rep as a classic, but I don't see it. it's a bizarre fantasy of a brilliant but emotionally damaged man who slips back and forth between reality and a sort of re-enactment of Orlando Furioso before the devotion of a good woman saves him and leads him back to his vocation as an artist. The second story, "Slow Sculpture," revisits the same basic idea, but with a scientist rather than an artist. One wonders about a certain degree of self-identification between author and characters. Anyway, this collection does not represent Sturgeon at his best.

[Joseph Sobanski · Rating 2 out of 5]

No great, the first story in this collection was way too long and abstract. By the very end it started to come together, but for 3/4 of that story I had no idea what was going on. The remaining stories are shorter in comparison, and much less ambitious. "Slow Sculpture" is pretty good, very philosophical. But many of the stories aren't even really sci-fi, and there was a reoccurring theme about uplifting power of genius in a corrupt world...yuk. Maybe about two or three of these stories were any good, imo. 1.5/5 rounded up.

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another collection of short stories that you would imagine are going to be science fiction. But only about three I would consider to be in the sci fi category. A few are just odd stories. Good stories. But if you are looking for space exploration, androids, aliens, planets, etc. You will be disappointed.

[Rod · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars, really. Some great stuff here, amidst some misfires that show their age...but I have to give it to Sturgeon for such a unique voice (and some of the sentences I had to go back and read again, as they are so unexpected; felt like jazz improvisations) and always trying new things and never forgetting the humans involved in whatever scenario he has fashioned for them.

[Fynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slow Sculpture, Crate, It's You!, Brownshoes & Suicide are excellent stories. The rest are fine except for To Here and the Easel which was almost as boring as it was confusing and gave me a headache.

[Angela Castille · Rating 4 out of 5]

The topics were heavy for short stories but the stories were wonderful!

[Cheryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mostly pretentious and/or self-indulgent. Some not even SF. Interesting little introduction that explains (justifies), but if an unknown author had written these, they would not have gotten bought, I bet. Except maybe Slow Sculpture which could have made it into a slick, I think. Still, I do wish 'Uncle Fremmis' would give some of our political and corporate leaders the treatment....

[Aaron · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can’t really pinpoint what turned me off from each of these stories, but although I am a big fan of many of Sturgeon’s other works, I found the entire collection tedious. I might have been in a mood. I will probably give it another try at a later date and see if I feel the same.

[bluetyson]

Sturgeon Is Alive and Well: A Collection of Short Stories by Theodore Sturgeon (1978)

[Frank Taranto · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sturgeon is one of thne better writers of short SF.

[Algernon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sturgeon is an exuberant and wonderful writer, transcending the boundaries of genre fiction. Several stories in this collection demonstrate his strengths and his humor.

[Ron · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first Sturgeon book that I've read. It is a collection of short stories. Some are great (Uncle Fremmis) and some not so great (To Here and the Easel).

[Hojaplateada · Rating 3 out of 5]

Buena recopilación de cuentos, algunos muy buenos y otros término medio. Buen promedio final. Uno de los cuentos ganó el Premio Nébula 1970.

[Janette · Rating 3 out of 5]

"To Here and the Easel" an "The Patterns of Dorne" are 4-star stories. "Slow Sculpture" is a five-star story. But the rest are merely interesting but not my cuppa.

[Fishface · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun little collection of Sturgeon's signature sci-fi stories. Each one is original and thought-provoking. Well worth the read.

[Dr. Awkward · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this on a quest for classic scifi -- which this is not, as it turns out, but it's good nonetheless. This book was apparently a kind of return to the spotlight for Sturgeon, and contains a bunch of interesting stories of various natures, some quite depressing but a good read nonetheless.