Customer Reviews

Some of Your Blood

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There's something delightfully seductive about being invited to poke through another person's private life - and in the opening of "Some Of Your Blood," that's exactly what Theodore Sturgeon does. Here, says the author, showing you the desk drawer full of file folders, look through these a while. Not that one, not that one . . . there, try that one. Sit back, relax, enjoy yourself . . . It's tempting; and of course you, me, The Reader, we succumb, open the file folder, and begin to read. The novel itself comes in the form of a case history: letters, memos, transcriptions, all detailing the life history and psychological study of a young man known as George Smith. It's not a conventional horror story, particularly not for the time in which it was written: nothing jumps out at you in the dark, no supernatural happenings take place, there are no curses, no ghosts, no monsters . . . well, maybe there's a monster. Maybe not. Shuffle through the desk drawer of Dr. Phillip Outerbridge and decide for yourself. Only watch out: with traditional flair, Theodore Sturgeon will have you believing one thing and realizing another, right up until the final pages. The ending of the book is a stunner. Not for the blood or the body count; something much subtler than that. Just be prepared to walk around feeling very chilled afterward. It's worth it, though. It really is. "Some Of Your Blood" was the first book by Theodore Sturgeon I ever read, and from the moment I closed the book - carefully, because the copy was quite literally falling to pieces - I was a Sturgeon addict. It's rare to find a book that is both heartbreakingly sweet and truly terrifying at once, but I think this might be such a book. It's probably not to everyone's taste; it may even offend some people, for the suggestions it makes and the conclusions it draws; but it definitely deserves to be read. So read it . . . You have the key. You know the way. And it is your privilege.

Theodore Sturgeon, Some of Your Blood (Carroll and Graf, 1961)

In the world of what we shall call "psychological fiction," for lack of a better term (to wit: that fiction that deals with a person being psychoanalyzed, psychologized, and/or psychiatrized), Theodore Sturgeon's short novel Some of Your Blood occupies a very odd position. It s recognized by the Horror Writers' Association as one of the Top 40 horror novels of all time (despite it being more of a novella) despite not really being a horror novel. Yet it is largely unknown to the larger mass of horror fans (look at the number of reviews written at Amazon. A backlist tile from Stephen King may have five to seven hundred customer reviews (The Stand seems to be the king, with seven hundred fifty-five); Some of Your Blood has six. What's up with that?

Maybe it's all about the presentation. Some of Your Blood is about a guy who hits a superios officer during his army days, and gets sent to a psychiatric facility for observation. On the surface, he seems to be perfectly all right; his doctor's CO wants him out, they need the bed. His doctor, on the other hand, senses something deeply wrong with the prisoner's autobiography.

The autobiography takes up the first seventy pages (short the beginning frame setting everything up) of the novella, and it alone is an amazing piece of writing, with a gentle wit about it and a naïve, but subtle, eagerness to please. Once we are out of the autobiography, and into the doctor's notes and correspondence with his superior officer, things get even more interesting. The prisoner is not all he seems...

This is a stunning little tale, neatly wrapped, waiting for the masses to discover it. Please, do so at your earliest opportunity. **** ½

The author of this book, Theodore Sturgeon, makes frequent appearances in K. Vonnegut's novels. He is (in Vonnegut's works) the genius science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, whose magnificent writing talent is unrecognized and forever relegated to appearing only in trashy paperbacks. This book is a Sturgeon-Trout masterpiece.

"Some of Your Blood" contains one of the most exquisitely beautiful love stories ever told. Like a perfect flower growing out of a concrete wall, part of its beauty is the improbability of its very existence. The lovers, George and Anna, are surrounded by physical and emotional squalor, and having each other is the only thing of consequence and beauty in their lives. The story is told as a psychiatric case history in the correspondence between an enlisted psychologists, an officer psychiatrist, and a brilliant nurse case-worker. It is an exciting, quick paced, splendidly crafted novel. This is not a horror story...it is a gem.

Sturgeon lulls you to sleep with his exquisite prose even as he begins to slowly reveal his character to you. He slowly strokes you along for about 75 pages, occasionally prodding you gently in the ribs with a hot poker to remind you this is horror. Then,he shows you the monster, and just when you think you know it all, in the last pages of the book, he knocks you down with the punch line. Outstanding; this story has been resonating in my head for a week.

Hitting an officer usually lands you in the stockade, not the psychiatric ward. But for 'George Smith' (not his real name), the officers at this base decided this would be an appropriate place. As the overworked ward was back in the States, a long ways from the fisticuffs, and the battered officer was killed shortly thereafter, it perhaps can be understood how George was locked up for three months without anyone seeing him. When he does finally become the object of attention, the battle cry is to get him out of there as quickly as possible, so the psychiatrist's time can be more usefully spent on those who have real problems. All that's required is to write up a nice sounding diagnosis, declare him cured, and discharge him. In pursuit of something on which to base his diagnosis, the psychiatrist asks George to write up his life history, in third person if that will help him tell his story truthfully.

It is here, with this autobiography, that Sturgeon starts to show just how brilliant a writer he was. Sturgeon often portrayed some the world's less fortunate in his stories, always with empathy and a way of making his readers see the portrayed character as a person, not as an object. Just so here, as George's story is deftly told, simple and in the appropriate vernacular of a poor kid of somewhat limited education. George was raised by a drunkard, abusive father and invalid mother, and his only relief from the abuse was his walks in the local woods, where he learned to hunt small game. As he matures, he becomes involved with Anna, eight years his senior. Eventually, in trying to please his father, he ran afoul of the law, and was placed in a juvenile home, and eventually joined the Army, where he seemed to fit quite well, until the incident with the officer.

At this point, I felt that here was a person who had been inappropriately placed in a mental institution, a quiet, reserved person who had somehow been pushed beyond a breaking point and for once let his anger dominate his actions. Here is where the real story starts, as the psychiatrist, reading George's account, feels there is something missing, something that George hasn't told, and he unfolds the arsenal of tools available to him to try and determine just what is missing. What is finally revealed about George is not only shocking and horrifying to the point of keeping me awake long after I finished this book, but also shows just how superb a job Sturgeon did in crafting George's 'autobiography', as again and again, certain mannerisms of expression, things that were not said, and things that were said but not taken literally are shown to be the keys to the real George. Sturgeon does not need the normal trappings of a horror novel here - there are no ghosts, no voices, no elements of the paranormal - rather we have something that is totally believable, and for that reason it is even more horrifying.

For once, psychiatry is shown capable of doing what it is supposed to do, a success story in a field littered with ultimate failures and partial insights, and perhaps this element is the weakest thing here - things go too well, too easily for the psychiatrist. The ending was a little too upbeat, perhaps, and Sturgeon made one slip that I thought was unnecessary, just too obvious, when he revealed that George's real name is 'Bela'. These are minor flaws in an otherwise excellent book that can make you really feel just how horrifying the world and some people who populate it can be.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

I just finished reading SOME OF YOUR BLOOD, a short book by Theodore Sturgeon which has been reissued by Carroll & Graff publishers. This is a subtly disturbing story about a private in the armed forces who is accidentally stuck in the nut bin after striking an officer. Another officer asks the head psychiatrist to expedite matters and get the man out of there.

The story is told in a series of documents. First a couple of letters and then a journal detailing the private's life to date. Slowly a true picture of George, as he is referred to in the third person in the journal. Who is this man? How does he think? How does he react? These are questions that are slowly answered as George is interviewed and tested.

The story is very cleverly written in that all you need to know is at the beginning of the book but you don't recognize it for what it is. Wording is chosen with extreme care to convey just the right meaning. I am glad that this book was originally released in 1961 and was written by someone like Sturgeon. Written today by someone else and the subtlety would be gone and we would have an explicit shocker. I highly recommend this story to any who enjoy delving into the mind.

Not really science-fiction, I'd call it psycho-drama. Very interesting story about a young man, his psyche and the causes of his strange situation. Nice.

I get more scared at the misrepresentation of a weak shortstory than anything in it. Not to take away from Sturgeon but this isa story so predictable, it makes you wonder why he even wrote it. And taking it for what it is, a sad short story-it's still not that good. It has an interesting setup, with correspondences furthering the plot, but it goes nowhere and fast. Avoid. For horror, read King or Barker. END