43. The Worlds of Theodore Sturgeon

I think I may be out on Theodore Sturgeon.  After finishing this collection of his short stories, I went back and read my past reviews of Sturgeon's works.  I really enjoyed The Dreaming Jewels, but I think he is just too much of a theoretical sci-fi author for me, sacrificing story for teasing out his ideas and concepts, most of which I don't find all that interesting.

This anthology, for instance,  had several stories that dealt with human psychology and technology that allowed scientists and psychiatrists to test out Sturgeon's wild theories on human psychology.  They all feel very dated, which is not a sin and of itself.  It's just that the '50s and psychology are kind of a particularly noxious mix, at least for me.  On top of that, the actual human relations that are in these stories feel really forced and artificial.  Love, in Sturgeon's world, seems super melodramatic.  He also seems to have a bit of an issue with being cuckolded, as that comes up in at least three of the stories here.

I apologize for belittling somebody who has contributed so much to the field ("Live long and prosper" being his line among other things) and who seems like an interesting and possibly quite good person.  He wants to understand why humans go to war, why we are so emotionally imperfect and he does a lot of interesting things exploring these themes.  His writing just doesn't work for me and these stories were a particular slog.

On a side note, there is a story in here, The Skills of Xanadu, about a super advanced humanity that is visited by another powerful (but less so) invader scout.  Though these people live in total harmony with freedom to do whatever they want, the women still are responsible for serving the food!  Sturgeon seemed like a very progressive thinker.  His novel Venus Plus X is about a species with a single gender.  He supposedly snuck in some homosexual subtext in an episode of Star Trek.  And yet even he cannot see beyond the dominant nuclear family heterosexual construct.  At first, I felt very critical of him, but upon further reflection it really makes you realize how powerful and fundamental these social constructs can be when you are inside of them.  If only 50 years ago, it was impossible for a science fiction writer to conceive of a future of humanity where women were not primarily responsible for homemaking, what rigid dogma are we today still stuck in?