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Slow Sculpture: Volume XII: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon

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SLOW SCULPTURE is VOL XII of Theodore Sturgeon's complete short fiction and is a marked improvement over the previous volume. The collection starts out with "The Widget, the Wadget, and Boff", one of his greatest novellas. Written in the mid-1950s, this long and excellent story focuses on the inhabitants of a boarding house who are being studied and manipulated by aliens in an experiment to test the limits of human consciousness. The rest of the stories represent Sturgeon's last concentrated burst of creativity which occurred during 1970-1971, following a period of several years of relative inactivity due to writer's block. The title story "Slow Sculpture" may well be Sturgeon's last true masterpiece, an exquisite story about the meeting of a solitary disillusioned genius and a woman with a deadly illness. Sturgeon's use of the art of bonsai as a central metaphor for human relationships is ingenious and affecting. Other standouts include "The Girl Who Knew What They Meant", a story where a girl's unusual intuition turns out not to be such a great gift, and "Uncle Fremmis", a somewhat whimsical tale about a man with an unusual knack for fixing broken-down machines (and humans) by giving them a hard knock in the right place. Particularly interesting from today's standpoint is "The Verity Files", told as a series of interoffice memos wherein a pharmaceutical company attempts to suppress a cure for cancer mainly because it causes euphoria as a side effect and could be easily duplicated by competitors. This story is just as relevant today as it was nearly 40 years ago, given the ongoing debate about medical marijuana usage and the use of addictive painkillers. Other interesting stories include "Occam's Scalpel", wherein Sturgeon tackles environmental issues and warns about global warming decades before it became a catch phrase, and "Dazed", wherein he poses (and answers) the question of whether a certain amount of chaos is necessary to allow change in the world.

What is most striking about these stories is the depth of emotion that burns through many of them, which contrasts markedly with the dispassionate irony and/or understatement which characterizes most recent fiction. Very few authors write in this manner today, which is unfortunate. When Sturgeon had something to say, he always said it with passion and conviction. He had a deep and abiding anger (although tempered with compassion) toward human behavior or societal values that he considered illogical, and he makes some very persuasive points in his stories. Although some of the stories may verge on preachiness, his sheer writing talent always keeps them entertaining, and his characters are superbly developed. At his best, Theodore Sturgeon was one of America's best short story writers, and anyone who appreciates great short fiction should be reading his work.

Readers should know that, unlike what it says in the promo blurb, this is not the final volume--there will be at least one more, entitled Case And The Dreamer, intended for publication next year. That said, this is a great selection of stories that you can look forward to reading, or re-reading, with enormous pleasure.

As a lifelong Sturgeon fan, I have been snapping up the compilation book by book. It is fitting, somehow, that the finale carries as the title story one of my all time favorites. Bravo to the work that went into this compendium of the works of a great, but often overlooked author!