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The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon #6
The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume VI: Baby Is Three
"Baby Is Three" is the sixth volume in the series devoted to the complete works of one of science fiction's titans. Like others in the series, this one includes extensive notes and background information on each story by editor Paul Williams. The early 1950s, during which this material was written, was the beginning of Sturgeon's greatest creative period. The title story for this collection was later expanded into the International Fantasy Award winning novel" More Than Human." Sturgeon's whimsical, sardonic sense of humor lifts his work out of the mundane realm of genre science fiction. This wide-ranging collection shows precisely why he has been cited as a primary influence by authors as varied as Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, and Carl Sagan.
Shadow, Shadow on the Wall
The Stars Are the Styx
Rule of Three
Make Room for Me (with Ree Dragonette)
Special Aptitude
The Traveling Crag
Excalibur and the Atom
The Incubi of Parallel X
Never Underestimate
The Sex Opposite
Baby Is Three
Shadow, Shadow on the Wall
The Stars Are the Styx
Rule of Three
Make Room for Me (with Ree Dragonette)
Special Aptitude
The Traveling Crag
Excalibur and the Atom
The Incubi of Parallel X
Never Underestimate
The Sex Opposite
Baby Is Three
424 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1999
9 people are currently reading
273 people want to read
About the author
Theodore Sturgeon
721 books768 followersTheodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) is considered one of the godfathers of contemporary science fiction and dark fantasy. The author of numerous acclaimed short stories and novels, among them the classics More Than Human, Venus Plus X, and To Marry Medusa, Sturgeon also wrote for television and holds among his credits two episodes of the original 1960s Star Trek series, for which he created the Vulcan mating ritual and the expression "Live long and prosper." He is also credited as the inspiration for Kurt Vonnegut's recurring fictional character Kilgore Trout.
Sturgeon is the recipient of the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the International Fantasy Award. In 2000, he was posthumously honored with a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement.
Sturgeon is the recipient of the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the International Fantasy Award. In 2000, he was posthumously honored with a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
May 27, 2020
Another full-blown Sturgeon collection. No matter how many or which other writers you've read, some of the stories here will blow your mind. Fully. ;)
The ones that blew mine are here:
https://choveshkata.net/forum/viewtop...
The ones that blew mine are here:
https://choveshkata.net/forum/viewtop...
May 27, 2016
In the interests of making myself feel old, I went back and looked up when I wrote a review of the previous volume of this series and discovered much to my dismay my poorly written single paragraph from the practically bygone year of 1999. Which is probably about the point I went from being a poor college student to a extremely busy poor college student mostly focused on plowing through the next what would turn out to be four years, apparently leaving myself little time to read the next volumes of this series as they came out. When the dust did settle, it seems I kept getting them at least (it looks like I bought this one in 2004, which also feels like a very long time ago) but I guess other books kept getting in the way. So now we're back and I really hope there wasn't one person reading that review from fifteen years ago waiting with baited breath to see what insights I'd have about this one. To that person, if they exist: sorry. I'll try to make up for it here.
When any kind of reading gap like that occurs, you wonder if your changing perspectives as the years go on will alter how you feel about a certain author. I like a lot of the stuff now that I liked when I was twenty and perhaps even more these days (according to my wife, too much), but there's a whole host of things that don't interest me anymore from those years and a segment of authors or works that you have mixed feelings about, where the glow of nostalgia paints a rosy picture but you find that time has made your views on it more complex and not as easily reconciled with both the person you are now and the world as it was back then.
But enough about my feelings on "Knight Rider". As it turns out, Sturgeon is just as good to my eyes in this century as he was in the last.
This volume covers the years 1950 to 1953, a period where Sturgeon was pretty decently prolific (at least by his standards, since there's only eleven stories here, but a couple of them are longish . . . but this may have been around the time he was emerging from a period of writer's block) and definitely hitting his stride as a writer, putting together a mix of tales that used SF as a backdrop to explore issues of sexuality and gender in a way that made them really only work as SF tales but he doesn't let the aliens and the occasional spaceship get in the way of what he's trying to say. What really comes across here, and may be the one thing that wouldn't have been as obvious to me reading these books fifteen years ago, is the urgency of his need to convey to us a universe where even if love isn't always the answer, its definitely one of the better options and can't be tied down to any one specific form or kind.
In fact, the big theme around these stories seems to be the fluidity of gender and the idea of people coming together to create something greater, with different combinations being tried. Reading these in order, you can see him teasing out the idea of the gesalt that would arrive with "Baby is Three" (and later "More Than Human") and what's interesting is how they don't feel like rough drafts. Only in context with his entire work do they feel like him teasing the issue out at different angles, trying to figure out how to best to approach and conquer it. Stuff like "Rule of Three" is good, especially in how sincere it feels, even if the involvement of aliens makes it feel like he's holding back. "Make Room For Me" mines similar territory and again the aliens makes the story feel of its time (every time they mention Titan you're waiting for Kurt Vonnegut to show up). It's only when he gets to "The Sex Opposite" that the alien elements start to hit home, contrasting not only a completely alien sexuality with a frankly charming friendship between a coroner and a reporter but more importantly it depicts the sense of loss when a link is disrupted and can't be regained, when something is lost that can't be described in human terms, except the feeling of total absence. Like most of his stories, it comes across as breezy, until it strikes hard.
But even with all those examples, its quite possible nothing will really prepare you for reading "Baby is Three" for the first time, unless you've read "More Than Human" already (a slightly reworked version is a third of that novel). For me, its been long enough since I've read the novel form that I can almost see it new. And he hits a new peak here, the prose alone marks a focused intensity that the rest of the stories, good as they are, simply don't have, as a young boy describes to a psychiatrist what his life has become since he fell in with a strange group of people who seem to serve as different parts of the same organism and only find fulfillment in being together. Subtracting the space elements and using evolution as the medium pushes the story closer to something we can understand, and what still impresses is how he shows the possible next stage of humanity but doesn't go all "Midwich Cuckoos" with it, leaving aside fear and mistrust for one person attempting to help another work through a problem they have the tools to process but aren't quite sure how to use those tools yet. He breaks open the psychology of the characters and at the same time points the story at us as if to say, we could be like this too, if we worked at it, if we stopped getting in each other's way and started working together.
Masterpiece and its thematic affiliates aside, the rest turn out to be above average SF stories. With stuff like "The Stars Are the Styx" he proposes fictional futures that feel right emotionally in their mix of hope and peril, a future where wonder means we haven't learned everything there is to learn yet. Not all of them are amazing but all have some their moments. "Excalibur and the Atom" feels like a 50s version of what Matt Wagner's "Mage" would become. The line in "The Traveling Crag" about the potential of humanity and our terrible expression of it that seems to encapsulate his entire philosophy. The weird world of "The Incubi of Parallel X" before it heads into B-movie territory. Sturgeon used his stories to express love and he used his stories to make a living and he used his stories to make a mark on the world and when he found the right mix of those elements (and he did more often than not) it was only his voice you heard, and it stuck deeply in the mind.
When any kind of reading gap like that occurs, you wonder if your changing perspectives as the years go on will alter how you feel about a certain author. I like a lot of the stuff now that I liked when I was twenty and perhaps even more these days (according to my wife, too much), but there's a whole host of things that don't interest me anymore from those years and a segment of authors or works that you have mixed feelings about, where the glow of nostalgia paints a rosy picture but you find that time has made your views on it more complex and not as easily reconciled with both the person you are now and the world as it was back then.
But enough about my feelings on "Knight Rider". As it turns out, Sturgeon is just as good to my eyes in this century as he was in the last.
This volume covers the years 1950 to 1953, a period where Sturgeon was pretty decently prolific (at least by his standards, since there's only eleven stories here, but a couple of them are longish . . . but this may have been around the time he was emerging from a period of writer's block) and definitely hitting his stride as a writer, putting together a mix of tales that used SF as a backdrop to explore issues of sexuality and gender in a way that made them really only work as SF tales but he doesn't let the aliens and the occasional spaceship get in the way of what he's trying to say. What really comes across here, and may be the one thing that wouldn't have been as obvious to me reading these books fifteen years ago, is the urgency of his need to convey to us a universe where even if love isn't always the answer, its definitely one of the better options and can't be tied down to any one specific form or kind.
In fact, the big theme around these stories seems to be the fluidity of gender and the idea of people coming together to create something greater, with different combinations being tried. Reading these in order, you can see him teasing out the idea of the gesalt that would arrive with "Baby is Three" (and later "More Than Human") and what's interesting is how they don't feel like rough drafts. Only in context with his entire work do they feel like him teasing the issue out at different angles, trying to figure out how to best to approach and conquer it. Stuff like "Rule of Three" is good, especially in how sincere it feels, even if the involvement of aliens makes it feel like he's holding back. "Make Room For Me" mines similar territory and again the aliens makes the story feel of its time (every time they mention Titan you're waiting for Kurt Vonnegut to show up). It's only when he gets to "The Sex Opposite" that the alien elements start to hit home, contrasting not only a completely alien sexuality with a frankly charming friendship between a coroner and a reporter but more importantly it depicts the sense of loss when a link is disrupted and can't be regained, when something is lost that can't be described in human terms, except the feeling of total absence. Like most of his stories, it comes across as breezy, until it strikes hard.
But even with all those examples, its quite possible nothing will really prepare you for reading "Baby is Three" for the first time, unless you've read "More Than Human" already (a slightly reworked version is a third of that novel). For me, its been long enough since I've read the novel form that I can almost see it new. And he hits a new peak here, the prose alone marks a focused intensity that the rest of the stories, good as they are, simply don't have, as a young boy describes to a psychiatrist what his life has become since he fell in with a strange group of people who seem to serve as different parts of the same organism and only find fulfillment in being together. Subtracting the space elements and using evolution as the medium pushes the story closer to something we can understand, and what still impresses is how he shows the possible next stage of humanity but doesn't go all "Midwich Cuckoos" with it, leaving aside fear and mistrust for one person attempting to help another work through a problem they have the tools to process but aren't quite sure how to use those tools yet. He breaks open the psychology of the characters and at the same time points the story at us as if to say, we could be like this too, if we worked at it, if we stopped getting in each other's way and started working together.
Masterpiece and its thematic affiliates aside, the rest turn out to be above average SF stories. With stuff like "The Stars Are the Styx" he proposes fictional futures that feel right emotionally in their mix of hope and peril, a future where wonder means we haven't learned everything there is to learn yet. Not all of them are amazing but all have some their moments. "Excalibur and the Atom" feels like a 50s version of what Matt Wagner's "Mage" would become. The line in "The Traveling Crag" about the potential of humanity and our terrible expression of it that seems to encapsulate his entire philosophy. The weird world of "The Incubi of Parallel X" before it heads into B-movie territory. Sturgeon used his stories to express love and he used his stories to make a living and he used his stories to make a mark on the world and when he found the right mix of those elements (and he did more often than not) it was only his voice you heard, and it stuck deeply in the mind.
September 10, 2018
Volume 6 in The Complete Works series gives us stories covering the period 1950 to 1953, when Sturgeon was beginning to be recognised as a major talent in the science fiction field. The collection contains the following stories, plus story notes and an appendix containing two short autobiographical essays:
Shadow, Shadow On The Wall
A short, fantasy/horror story, featuring a boy, his wicked stepmother, and the shadow on his bedroom wall, which doesn’t seem to disappear, even in the dark. This was the first story Sturgeon sold after a year of writers’ block, since starting his job as a copywriter at Time Inc. The story was originally published in Imagination magazine, February 1951.
The Stars Are The Styx
A story of relationships, set on a space station where Earth’s misfits are dispatched into hyperspace, with only around a fifty percent chance of survival. Originally published in the very first edition of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine.
Rule of Three
Three tripartite energy beings, each made up of three individuals living in symbiosis, visit earth to study humanity. They discover that humanity is infected with the Pa’ak energy virus, which cultivates and feeds off neuroses, and is deadly to energy-based lifeforms. The aliens split into their individual component parts, as this makes them less susceptible to the virus, and each merges with a human in order to study their behaviour and try to discover a way to stop the virus spreading throughout the cosmos when humanity eventually develops space travel. Unfortunately, the aliens find that humans prefer to live as pairs, and that three is definitely a crowd, as they struggle to get the right three humans in close enough contact to be able to re-merge into their tripartite forms.
Make Room For Me
A story with a similar premise to the previous one. Alien psychic parasites, whose psyches consist of three parts, are in danger of extinction, as their hosts are not reproducing fast enough. The aliens build a machine to send one of them to Earth, to determine if they could use humans as new hosts, but in order to do this, the alien psyche must be split into its individual parts and each part implanted into a different human. Once implanted, the three parts recombine and the alien can then control the humans. Unfortunately, the alien is imbued with empathy, and he realises he does not want to control the humans, so he develops a plan to help his fellow parasites, such that they will not have to leave their planet and come to Earth.
Special Aptitude
A mission to Venus to collect energy crystals must cope with the native Gabblers, whose terrifying cries have seen off two previous missions. However, a mild-mannered civilian mission specialist, who is ridiculed by the rest of the crew, realises the Gabblers have been misunderstood. First published under the title Last Laugh, in Other Worlds Science Stories, March 1951.
The Traveling Crag
A literary agent discovers a writer who can produce a near-perfect story, but only when under the influence of an alien artefact. Unfortunately, the aliens want their device back.
Excalibur And The Atom
A tale of Arthurian legend, but set in the present day, as a private eye is hired by a Miss Morgan to find a very special cup and fulfil his destiny. A previously uncollected story, its only other publication being its original appearance in Fantastic Adventures magazine in 1951.
The Incubi of Parallel X
A ‘Land of The Giants’ scenario, in which our hero and his beefy companion travel through a gateway to a parallel world, populated by eighty foot tall women. Written in a very pulpy style for Planet Stories magazine, which specialised in this sort of thing.
Never Underestimate
A male scientist discovers a way to prevent women using their feminine wiles to influence men, but all doesn’t go according to plan when he deploys his new weapon in the war of the sexes.
The Sex Opposite
Following an apparent double murder, a symbiotic, asexual being shows a medical investigator and a reporter that they really were meant for each other. Another of Sturgeon’s stories looking at the nature of love.
Baby Is Three
A tale of a group of children with psychic powers, who together form a gestalt organism. The story is recounted by one of the children during a visit to a psychiatrist. Sturgeon later rewrote and expanded the story for publication as his award-winning novel More Than Human.
This is another solid volume in this excellent series, with not a clunker of a story to be seen. Sturgeon seems to have had a liking for stories of misfits around this time, as the first two stories and Special Aptitude all feature characters who feel they don’t belong or are put upon. The stand out story is, of course, Baby Is Three, which apparently surprised Sturgeon with its popularity, and surprised him even more when the expanded novel version came to be considered one of science fiction’s masterpieces. The psychoanalysis in Baby Is Three was based on Sturgeon's experience as an early practitioner of Dianetics (now known as Scientology). Sturgeon also used his own experiences in Make Room For Me, where the three main characters are based upon himself, an old school friend and his co-writer (who is not acknowledged), with some of the dialog lifted near-verbatim from school discussions amongst the trio.
Another highly recommended volume for anyone looking for good examples of Sturgeon’s works.
Shadow, Shadow On The Wall
A short, fantasy/horror story, featuring a boy, his wicked stepmother, and the shadow on his bedroom wall, which doesn’t seem to disappear, even in the dark. This was the first story Sturgeon sold after a year of writers’ block, since starting his job as a copywriter at Time Inc. The story was originally published in Imagination magazine, February 1951.
The Stars Are The Styx
A story of relationships, set on a space station where Earth’s misfits are dispatched into hyperspace, with only around a fifty percent chance of survival. Originally published in the very first edition of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine.
Rule of Three
Three tripartite energy beings, each made up of three individuals living in symbiosis, visit earth to study humanity. They discover that humanity is infected with the Pa’ak energy virus, which cultivates and feeds off neuroses, and is deadly to energy-based lifeforms. The aliens split into their individual component parts, as this makes them less susceptible to the virus, and each merges with a human in order to study their behaviour and try to discover a way to stop the virus spreading throughout the cosmos when humanity eventually develops space travel. Unfortunately, the aliens find that humans prefer to live as pairs, and that three is definitely a crowd, as they struggle to get the right three humans in close enough contact to be able to re-merge into their tripartite forms.
Make Room For Me
A story with a similar premise to the previous one. Alien psychic parasites, whose psyches consist of three parts, are in danger of extinction, as their hosts are not reproducing fast enough. The aliens build a machine to send one of them to Earth, to determine if they could use humans as new hosts, but in order to do this, the alien psyche must be split into its individual parts and each part implanted into a different human. Once implanted, the three parts recombine and the alien can then control the humans. Unfortunately, the alien is imbued with empathy, and he realises he does not want to control the humans, so he develops a plan to help his fellow parasites, such that they will not have to leave their planet and come to Earth.
Special Aptitude
A mission to Venus to collect energy crystals must cope with the native Gabblers, whose terrifying cries have seen off two previous missions. However, a mild-mannered civilian mission specialist, who is ridiculed by the rest of the crew, realises the Gabblers have been misunderstood. First published under the title Last Laugh, in Other Worlds Science Stories, March 1951.
The Traveling Crag
A literary agent discovers a writer who can produce a near-perfect story, but only when under the influence of an alien artefact. Unfortunately, the aliens want their device back.
Excalibur And The Atom
A tale of Arthurian legend, but set in the present day, as a private eye is hired by a Miss Morgan to find a very special cup and fulfil his destiny. A previously uncollected story, its only other publication being its original appearance in Fantastic Adventures magazine in 1951.
The Incubi of Parallel X
A ‘Land of The Giants’ scenario, in which our hero and his beefy companion travel through a gateway to a parallel world, populated by eighty foot tall women. Written in a very pulpy style for Planet Stories magazine, which specialised in this sort of thing.
Never Underestimate
A male scientist discovers a way to prevent women using their feminine wiles to influence men, but all doesn’t go according to plan when he deploys his new weapon in the war of the sexes.
The Sex Opposite
Following an apparent double murder, a symbiotic, asexual being shows a medical investigator and a reporter that they really were meant for each other. Another of Sturgeon’s stories looking at the nature of love.
Baby Is Three
A tale of a group of children with psychic powers, who together form a gestalt organism. The story is recounted by one of the children during a visit to a psychiatrist. Sturgeon later rewrote and expanded the story for publication as his award-winning novel More Than Human.
This is another solid volume in this excellent series, with not a clunker of a story to be seen. Sturgeon seems to have had a liking for stories of misfits around this time, as the first two stories and Special Aptitude all feature characters who feel they don’t belong or are put upon. The stand out story is, of course, Baby Is Three, which apparently surprised Sturgeon with its popularity, and surprised him even more when the expanded novel version came to be considered one of science fiction’s masterpieces. The psychoanalysis in Baby Is Three was based on Sturgeon's experience as an early practitioner of Dianetics (now known as Scientology). Sturgeon also used his own experiences in Make Room For Me, where the three main characters are based upon himself, an old school friend and his co-writer (who is not acknowledged), with some of the dialog lifted near-verbatim from school discussions amongst the trio.
Another highly recommended volume for anyone looking for good examples of Sturgeon’s works.
September 22, 2015
Really good save for a couple stories that for me were so "gender roles and likely misogyny!" that it was hard to pay attention. As always, "Baby Is Three" is fantastic and I notice new things every time I read it.
December 8, 2015
Big surprise I fall in love with a story about kids with psychic powers, but this is definitely the most clever and witty of the stories in the collection so far. A fun idea and it left me with a big grin on my face. There's a couple outdated terms used, but they are forgivable given the way the minority characters are treated.
May 4, 2016
Volume 6 of 13 of the complete short stories by the man that I consider one of the best writers of short fiction in any genre.
October 19, 2023
The first half of Excalibur and the Atom was a well-written noir story and that's about the only nice thing I can say about this book. Didn't actually read Baby is Three, the last story in this book, because Sturgeon later rewrote it into a part of the novel More Than Human and I'd rather read it in that form.
October 13, 2018
I only read the Baby is Three out of this collection, it is very interesting story in which a bunch of children function as a sort of combined organism. Each child is responsible for a different aspect of how they function, one kid is the mind, etc.
February 14, 2025
An absolutely brilliant take on the "man tells psychiatrist " trope. The sci fi elements are so well blended you never question them.
May 12, 2025
not my favorite of the sturgeon collections but there are still some standout gems in this one. The Opposite Sex in particular has some really beautiful concepts at its core.
January 9, 2021
If you're wondering how imaginative is Sturgeon, he gave Mr. Spock a sex life.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews