THE DEEP ONES: "It" by Theodore Sturgeon

"It" by Theodore Sturgeon

Discussion begins September 11th.

Originally published in the August 1940 issue of Unknown Fantasy Fiction.



ONLINE VERSIONS

None found to date.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?41269

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

The Frankenstein Omnibus
The Horror Hall of Fame
Alien Cargo
65 Great Tales of Horror

MISCELLANY

http://www.theodoresturgeontrust.com/williams.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Sturgeon
http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix3/ittheodoresturgeon.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It!_%28short_story%29
http://tinyurl.com/kkoel5g

I have a lot of Ted Sturgeon in my library, but not this one!

The Ultimate Egoist for me, but I think I may have read this before out of Alien Cargo.

more print versions:

It, (nv) Unknown Aug 1940

Who Knocks?, ed. August Derleth, Rinehart 1946

Without Sorcery, Prime Press, 1948

Br-r-r-!, ed. Groff Conklin, Avon 1959

Not Without Sorcery, Ballantine 1961

Who Knocks?, ed. August Derleth, Panther 1964

The Dark Side, ed. Damon Knight, Doubleday 1965

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Scared Even Me, ed. Alfred Hitchcock, Rinehart 1967

Famous Monster Tales, ed. Basil Davenport, Van Nostrand Rinehold 1967

Stories That Scared Even Me, ed. Alfred Hitchcock, Random 1967

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Scared Even Me, Part One, ed. Alfred Hitchcock, Pan 1970

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Scream Along with Me, ed. Alfred Hitchcock, Dell 1970

The Monster Makers, ed. Peter Haining, London: Victor Gollancz 1974

Creatures from Beyond, ed. Terry Carr, SFBC 1975

The Great SF Stories 2 (1940), ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg, DAW 1979

Isaac Asimov Presents The Golden Years of Science Fiction, ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg,
Bonanza/Crown 1983

The Ultimate Egoist for me as well.

> 1

Sturgeon didn't rate the cover? Who are those people?

>4 bookstopshere:

Those are all listed in the isfdb link above.

I'll see if a friend of mine might have a copy of one of these.

If I can't find a paperback reprint of any of those books listed in (4) I'll have to sit this one out (I've a nasty suspicion the only Ted Sturgeon I've read is "Killdozer!")

>8 housefulofpaper:

I recommend Some of Your Blood, one of the best vampire novels out there. And More Than Human ain't too shabby as far as SF goes!

I'm a Sturgeon fan, and I've nominated stories by him which have failed in DEEP ONES votes for seasons past. His first novel, The Dreaming Jewels (a.k.a. The Synthetic Man) has a lot to recommend it to fans of weird horror.

>10 paradoxosalpha: Well, depending on the reaction to "It" next week, perhaps a nomination for Sturgeon's "Bianca's Hands" is in order.

> 11

"Bianca's Hands"? *shudder*

Got a copy of Not Without Sorcery from a pal. Signed, no less. I'm in!

Selected Stories of Theodore Sturgeon for me. Not easy to search a prolific authors works for a story named "It"!

Just a few background notes before we discuss the story.

It was written during a 10 hour session while Sturgeon was on his honeymoon. It was not the only time in his life, he noted, that the emotions of his private life were almost the complete opposite of that in a story he was writing at the time.

The character names were derived from Sturgeon's "ubiquitous coffee-maker".

Sturgeon and his fans seem to generally think it was with this story he begin to develop a reputation.

Unknown's blurb for the story was: "IT WASN'T VICIOUS; IT WAS SIMPLY CURIOUS -- AND VERY HORRIBLY DEADLY!".

Mixed feelings about this one -- especially since I'm the one that nominated it.

I first read it about 14 years ago and found it an effective and powerful piece of horror.

On the second reading, though, it was less effective. To be sure, the central idea, the creature spontaneously formed from the mold and rot on the forest floor, sloughing off bits, was good. The idea, as the blurb says, of a naïve creature logical and lethal out of innocent curiosity was interesting. The image of such creature was powerfully distilled in the comics Man-Thing and the Swamp Thing.

However, bits of the young Sturgeon, the one you see in most of the contents of The Ultimate Egoist, are on display. That was the Sturgeon who wrote little stories full of cons and scams and heists, and that's what I was unpleasantly reminded of with the whole element of Kirk's will. Granted, Sturgeon doesn't go with the sweet, mega happy ending. Alton's and Kimbos are dead. Babe has nightmares. The farm may have more money now, but it's not ahead. (And, again, the visual image of Kirk's skeleton being revealed on the creature's demise, was good.)

I did notice the strained nature of the family -- the two brothers at odds over farm chores and Alton's perhaps suppressed sexual longing for his brother's wife, but, I don't think that element was thematically incorporated into the story as a whole. It just stood out there as atmosphere and a plot element.

One thing I've noticed in the Sturgeon I've read is the intense humanity lodged at the core, from the personal relationships in "It" to the family-by-proxy in More Than Human. Even the dangerous "vampire" in Some of Your Blood is all too human. If the horror / SF elements were entirely removed, the reader would still recognize and want to spend time with these characters.

It's funny that Sturgeon didn't find out until after being honored at the 1975 San Diego Comic Con that "It" had been the germ of multiple horror comics series. And even then, he evidently never "got" the connections through any actual reading. In the notes appended to The Ultimate Egoist he is quoted as saying that "It" had been "the great granddaddy of The Swamp Thing, The Hulk, The Man Thing, and I don't know how many other(s)" (384). Two out of three's not bad, but The Hulk clearly draws nothing from "It," being merely an atomic-age Jekyll and Hyde riff.

Sturgeon always puts in serious effort to make the reader care about his characters. Even though the pacing of this story is a lot like a B-horror monster feature, with isolated characters being murdered by the mysterious assailant, there's none of the sadistic glee or setup to make the victims either "deserving" and/or "innocent."

The most innocent character in this story is certainly the monster.

>19 paradoxosalpha:

The monster may be "innocent", but Sturgeon doesn't take the monster down the Frankenstein route - this is no misunderstood brute, deserving the reader's empathy. It's not a malicious entity, either, despite its propensity for killing other living beings. It's just curious.

I read this from Great SF Stories 2. Asimov has an amusing intro: "The trouble with horror stories is that most of them don't horrify you. Nothing by Lovecraft ever horrified me for instance because he labored so hard over the atmosphere and spent so much time telling you it was horrible, that you grew bored. Not so here. If you've never read this before, read it now, and it will be a long time before you can look garbage in the face again."

> 20 Yes, it is a perfect example of Cosmic Indifferentism. It is so indifferent It is not quite sure whether It is alive or dead, and doesn't care a whit. The final dissolution scene is something I have never found in any other author -- a being contemplating its unbeing with complete equanimity, as just another datum. I doubt any Vulcan was ever that philosophical, or Marcus Aurelius. Interestingly enough, the brook into which It falls into is characterized as happy and good. The brook spread It's substance out to feed water plants. "The brook laughed about it for an age." 'It' does not take sides but Sturgeon does.

Joshi says the story is "one of Unknown's most noteworthy contributions to supernatural literature" in Unutterable Horror Volume 2. He also writes that the explanation involving Roger Kirk's body and spontaneous accretion of 'hot molds' may not be convincing, but "there is no question of the novelette's clutching grimness."

Did anybody else notice that It fell into the water ('I'm melting!') after Babe hit it on the ankle with a stone? It was beauty killed the beast.

> 21

It didn't strike me as incongruous at the time, but there certainly is a strange juxtoposition of the metaphorically happy brook and the actually conscious but completely impassive mould-monster.

>21 bertilak:, 22

Cosmically indifferent in its curiosity! Sounds like something Grandpa would come up with. :-)

I really liked the line "The brook laughed about it for an age" as I read it. The entire dissolution sequence is nicely poetic.