THEODORE STURGEON
Theodore Sturgeon’s (1918–1985) fiction abounds with ordinary characters undone by their all-too-human shortcomings or struggling in unsympathetic environments to find others who share their desires and feelings of loneliness. Sturgeon began publishing science fiction in 1939, and made his mark early in both fantasy and science fiction with stories that have since become classics. “Microcosmic God” concerns a scientist who plays God with unexpectedly amusing results when he repeatedly challenges a microscopic race he has created with threats to their survival. “It” focuses on the reactions of characters in a rural setting trying to contend with a rampaging inhuman monster. “Killdozer” is a variation on the theme of Frankenstein in which a construction crew is trapped on an island where a bulldozer has become imbued with the electrical energy of an alien life form.
Fiction Sturgeon wrote after World War II showed the gentle humor of his earlier work shading into pathos. “Memorial” and “Thunder and Roses” were cautionary tales about the abuses of use of nuclear weapons. “A Saucer of Loneliness” and “Maturity” both used traditional science- fiction scenarios to explore feelings of alienation and inadequacy. Sturgeon’s work at novel length is memorable for its portrayals of characters who rise above the isolation their failure to fit into normal society imposes. More Than Human tells of a group of psychologically dysfunctional individuals who pool their individual strengths to create a superhuman gestalt consciousness. In The Dreaming Jewels, a young boy discovers that his behavioral abnormalities are actually the symptoms of super- human powers. Sturgeon is also renowned for his explorations of taboo sexuality and restrictive moralities in such stories as Some of Your Blood, “The World Well Lost,” and “If All Men Were Brothers Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?” His short fiction has been collected in Without Sorcery, E Pluribus Unicorn, Caviar, and A Touch of Strange. The compilations The Ultimate Egoist, Thunder and Roses, A Saucer of Lone- liness, The Perfect Host, Baby Is Three, The Microcosmic God, and Killdozer, edited by Paul Williams, are the first seven volumes in a series that will eventually reprint all of Sturgeon’s short fiction.
Traveling into the past only to discover that the past isn’t there any more is a popular conceit of the genre. “Yesterday Was Monday,” one of his most-often reprinted tales, is one of the early time-travel stories that were published after the pulp era, where the emphasis wasn’t on science yet so much as strangeness, evoking a surreal feeling that this story embodies perfectly. Making the protagonist of the story an everyday person waking up in his own past instead of a scientist or an inventor only adds to the unusual blend of time travel and fantasy.
Yesterday Was Monday
Theodore Sturgeon
HARRY WRIGHT ROLLED over and said something spelled “Bzzzzhha-a-aw!” He chewed a bit on a mouthful of dry air and spat it out, opened one eye to see if it really would open, opened the other and closed the first, closed the second, swung his feet onto the floor, opened them again and stretched. This was a daily occurrence, and the only thing that made it remarkable at all was that he did it on a Wednesday morning, and—
Yesterday was Monday.
Oh, he knew it was Wednesday all right. It was partly that, even though he knew yesterday was Monday, there was a gap between Monday and now; and that must have been Tuesday. When you fall asleep and lie there all night without dreaming, you know, when you wake up, that time has passed. You’ve done nothing that you can remember; you’ve had no particular thoughts, no way to gauge time, and yet you know that some hours have passed. So it was with Harry Wright. Tuesday had gone wherever your eight hours went last night.
But he hadn’t slept through Tuesday. Oh no. He never slept, as a matter of fact, more than six hours at a stretch, and there was no particular reason for him doing so now. Monday was the day before yesterday; he had turned in and slept his usual stretch, he had awakened, and it was Wednesday.
It felt like Wednesday. There was a Wednesdayish feel to the air.
Harry put on his socks and stood up. He wasn’t fooled. He knew what day it was. “What happened to yesterday?” he muttered. “Oh—yesterday was Monday.” That sufficed until he got his pajamas off. “Monday,” he mused, reaching for his underwear, “was quite a while back, seems as though.” If he had been the worrying type, he would have started then and there. But he wasn’t. He was an easygoing sort, the kind of man that gets himself into a rut and stays there until he is pushed out. That was why he was an automobile mechanic at twenty-three dollars a week; that’s why he had been one for eight years now, and would be from now on, if he could only find Tuesday and get back to work.
Guided by his reflexes, as usual, and with no mental effort at all, which was also usual, he finished washing, dressing, and making his bed. His alarm clock, which never alarmed because he was of such regular habits, said, as usual, six twenty-two when he paused on the way out, and gave his room the once-over. And there was a certain something about the place that made even this phlegmatic character stop and think.
It wasn’t finished.
The bed was there, and the picture of Joe Louis. There were the two chairs sharing their usual seven legs, the split table, the pipe-organ bedstead, the beige wallpaper with the two swans over and over and over, the tiny corner sink, the tilted bureau. But none of them were finished. Not that there were any holes in anything. What paint there had been in the first place was still there. But there was an odor of old cut lumber, a subtle, insistent air of building, about the room and everything in it. It was indefinable, inescapable, and Harry Wright stood there caught up in it, wondering. He glanced suspiciously around but saw nothing he could really be suspicious of. He shook his head, locked the door and went out into the hall.
On the steps a little fellow, just over three feet tall, was gently stroking the third step from the top with a razor-sharp chisel, shaping up a new scar in the dirty wood. He looked up as Harry approached, and stood up quickly.
“Hi,” said Harry, taking in the man’s leather coat, his peaked cap, his wizened, bright-eyed little face. “Whatcha doing?”
“Touch-up,” piped the little man. “The actor in the third floor front has a nail in his right heel. He came in late Tuesday night and cut the wood here. I have to get it ready for Wednesday.”
“This is Wednesday,” Harry pointed out.
“Of course. Always has been. Always will be.”
Harry let that pass, started on down the stairs. He had achieved his amazing bovinity by making a practice of ignoring things he could not understand. But one thing bothered him—
“Did you say that feller in the third floor front was an actor?”
“Yes. They’re all actors, you know.”
“You’re nuts, friend,” said Harry bluntly. “That guy works on the docks.”
“Oh yes—that’s his part. That’s what he acts.”
“No kiddin’. An’ what does he do when he isn’t acting?”
“But he—Well, that’s all he does do! That’s all any of the actors do!”
“Gee— I thought he looked like a reg’lar guy, too,” said Harry. “An actor? ’Magine!”
“Excuse me,” said the little man, “but I’ve got to get back to work. We mustn’t let anything get by us, you know. They’ll be through Tuesday before long, and everything must be ready for them.”
Harry thought: this guy’s crazy nuts. He smiled uncertainly and went down to the landing below. When he looked back the man was cutting skillfully into the stair, making a neat little nail scratch. Harry shook his head. This was a screwy morning. He’d be glad to get back to the shop. There was a ’39 sedan down there with a busted rear spring. Once he got his mind on that he could forget this nonsense. That’s all that matters to a man in a rut. Work, eat, sleep, pay day. Why even try to think anything else out?
The street was a riot of activity, but then it always was. But not quite this way. There were automobiles and trucks and buses around, aplenty, but none of them were moving. And none of them were quite complete. This was Harry’s own field; if there was anything he didn’t know about motor vehicles, it wasn’t very important. And through that medium he began to get the general idea of what was going on.
Swarms of little men who might have been twins of the one he had spoken to were crowding around the cars, the sidewalks, the stores and buildings. All were working like mad with every tool imaginable. Some were touching up the finish of the cars with fine wire brushes, laying on networks of microscopic cracks and scratches. Some, with ball peens and mallets, were denting fenders skillfully, bending bumpers in an artful crash pattern, spider-webbing safety-glass windshields. Others were aging top dressing with high-pressure, needlepoint sandblasters. Still others were pumping dust into upholstery, sandpapering the dashboard finish around light switches, throttles, chokes, to give a finger-worn appearance. Harry stood aside as a half dozen of the workers scampered down the street bearing a fender which they riveted to a 1930 coupé. It was freshly bloodstained.
Once awakened to this highly unusual activity, Harry stopped, ...
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