Customer Reviews

The Cosmic Rape

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Sturgeon seems to delight in telling a number of disjointed stories and trying to bring everything together in the end. While he is relatively successful doing that here, the actual reading of the novel can be a little frustrating--when you are halfway through a book and are still being presented with brand new characters doing things that seem to relate not at all with the actions of the characters you have already met, you start to wonder just what is going on. Fortunately, Sturgeon does possess the skills to create memorable characters, so the danger of getting confused about the identities of individuals is fairly low. Still, though, the constant jumping about only serves to harm the potential of the novel, I feel. Just when you are really relating to a character and beginning to understand him/her, you are suddenly whisked off to a totally different place. While the ending is rather good, you as a reader just don't care enough about any of the characters to feel much of anything when you are finished; the whole story quickly flits out of your mind as you immediately reach for a new book off of your shelves.

The basic idea is a rather good one. Earth is invaded by a spore-like creature representing a hive of creatures called the Medusa; the alien culture is spreading throughout the universe assimilating all life forms into its hive mind. Every organism on every planet to be found in over two galaxies is linked together and can communicate with each other immediately over thousands of light years' distance...it is enough to say that I found it rather refreshing and brilliant. The novel pretty much stands on the merits of Sturgeon's description of man's reaction to the cosmic challenge (the title's suggestion of cosmic rape is not quite discernible to me)--without such an effective ploy by the author, this would be a mediocre sci-fi novel long forgotten. This book is worth reading and does supply some satisfaction to the reader, but it is far from being Sturgeon's best work.

Theodore Sturgeon's The Cosmic Rape (1958) is an unusual and refreshing take on the alien invasion trope -- especially for a 1950s novel. Unlike many other reviewers, I found that the mechanics of the work (innumerable characters, short length, and ramshackle structure) do not detract from the overall result. Sturgeon's prose is, as always, admirable. Although the novel can feel like an outline rather than a fully fleshed out novel like his earlier masterpiece of the genre, More than Human (1953), the end result is a poignant exploration of collective conscious/individuality.

Brief Plot Summary (limited spoilers)

Gurlick, an alcoholic homeless man, accidentally ingests a seed of the Medusa (in a half-eaten hamburger found in a trashcan). However, the Medusa does not immediately transform him. Instead, the Medusa's ability to convey/carry it's ultimate goal (to create a hive-mind) is restrained by the paltry abilities of Gurlick's intellect. Most importantly, the Medusa is baffled by humanity which has achieved so much individually without a hive-mind. The individuality of humanity (despite wars, struggle, isolation) is its most notable and positive quality. The alien believes that humanity once had a hive-mind that fractured overtime.

Thus the unusual galaxy spanning entity has Gurlick discover how to "put people's brains back together again." The alien's reward plays into Gurlick's base desires -- he can break whatever he wants. The chapters containing Gurlick's story are the most numerous.

Other secondary characters include Dimity Carmichael who is aroused by the sexual sufferings of others (in this case an abused co-worker). A perpetually frightened boy name Henry who is unable to differentiate between happiness and punishment because his abusive father begins all his punishments with smiles. And Mbala (clearly Sturgeon had just read Achebe's Things Fall Apart) whose manhood is challenged by a yam thief. Although there are numerous other side jaunts/characters everything wraps up in a relatively cohesive whole at the end.

Final Thoughts

The structure of Sturgeon's work can be quite frustrating. Sturgeon's preference for the short story form means that each character hardly receives more than one or two short chapters. Each story is linked thematically by a scene of guilt, fear, anger... The event causing the emotion-often characterized by miscommunication between individuals-serves to isolates the character from others. This isolation/miscommunication is paired with the arrival of the Medusa which seeks to create a human hivemind which it will be able to control.

For a novel barely clocking in at 160 pages and comprised of numerous small chunks, Sturgeon manages to ask and ruminate on some very pertinent themes. The Cosmic Rape is in no way a masterpiece of the caliber of More than Human but deserves to be read by all fans of Theodore Sturgeon and the genre. This is a fascinating re-invention of the alien invasion trope.

Theodore Sturgeon is one of the grandmasters of the sci-fi genre and this story's unusual take on the old alien invasion theme is almost as refreshingly different today as it must have been decades ago when it first appeared, but nonetheless it can hardly be considered one of his masterpieces. The original short story on which this novel was based was probably closer to the right length than this sprawling, disparate mess of a novel. Sturgeon has a couple of clever ideas here, but one of them has to be saved for the climax and the other has to be laid out from the very beginning, and that leaves a long, drawn out middle section that may try some readers' patience. There's clearly a point to this volume's slightly experimental, disjointed structure, so devoted readers shouldn't be too quick to abandon the book midway through, but the sad fact is that the clever conclusion really doesn't justify the often-tedious reading, despite this book's relative brevity.

Without giving away too much of the plot, an interplanetary group mind called the Medusa makes contact with a down and out loser through whom they hope to first unify, and then absorb, the entire human race. Having established this, Sturgeon takes us into a long string of subplots, or rather something less than subplots, representing the extreme diversity and fragmentation of contemporary human experience. Unfortunately, most of these vignettes are not science fiction, and don't compare favorably with similar pieces of human drama as written by, say, John O'Hara or Anton Chekhov. Not that Sturgeon isn't capable of bringing off something of that ilk - his brilliant short story "Bright Segment" certainly qualifies as being that good, but the pieces featured here simply don't measure up, especially with no sci-fi legerdemain to save them from ordinariness. Only the conclusion is really up to Sturgeon's standard, and by that time, many readers will have stopped caring.

This is an excellent book by the inspiration for Kilgore Trout. Excellent Sci-fi, with deeper meaning