I can’t decide how to describe these six stories (really four stories, one novella, and one novelette) by Theodore Sturgeon. They are not science fiction—although there is travel between dimensions in time and space. They are not fantasy—although there is the novella about the man Gorwing, who mysteriously knows whenever someone desperately needs something (no scientific or logical explanation given). And they are not horror—although a story like “The Bones” echoes spooky like Bradbury meets Lovecraft.
Despite the portraits done in music, the giant worms fermenting alcohol in coconuts to pass along to an aging and phantasm-tortured alcoholic, the transdimensional old men in floating chairs, despite the determined preparation for the beavers to inherit the earth, this collection is closer to nonfiction, to the real world, than any genre. Read a single page of Sturgeon and you’ll understand why this is.
Underneath the clever plots and strange situations featured in this collection are characters that are heartbreakingly real and recognizable in their neuroses and hang-ups, in their victories and defeats.
In “Need” there is the man and his wife—him plagued by the eternal worry of being a coward (and thus a cruel husband), and her who only wants someone to care for.
In “Abreaction” the man who has forgotten everything has only one concern. It doesn’t bother him that he is unsure where he is, who he is, or how to do his job; for him, it is somehow much more significant that he remember the name of his Puerto Rican coworker.
“Nightmare Island” presents a man who finds his first real friend in an unexpected place (and species) only to have him ripped away.
“Largo” is about the man who seems to regenerate from one generation to the next, both in fiction and real life: the man in love, rejected by his girl and duped by her lover, forever haunted by her face, always in love, constantly plotting revenge.
“The Bones” gives a peek into the last living moments of the dead. You don’t just see the way they die—you see all they felt leading up to it, all their hurts, the memories that grip them and won’t let go.
The final piece in the collection, “Like Young,” is the obvious place to end the book. In this story, a man is tasked with writing an ode for a ceremony heralding the passing of the torch of culture and intelligence from man to beaver. As he sits alone by the sea trying to hammer it out, he experiences a moment that seems inevitable, irreplaceable, and priceless, a moment in which the human past is given meaning and the uncertain future is imbued with hope.
These pieces may be strange and outlandish, but they also project small aspects of our humanity into the void for us to contemplate. They shine a flashlight in the dark at the things we often consider mundane, the things that are really the most telling.
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