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Theodore Sturgeon
19181985
Theodore Sturgeon was born Edward Hamilton Waldo on February 26, 1918, to Edward and Christine Hamilton Waldo on Staten Island, New York. Sturgeon's parents were divorced in 1927. His mother remarried two years later, whereupon he was adopted by his stepfather and legally changed his name to Theodore Hamilton Sturgeon. He attended Overbrook High School in Philadelphia, where an early enthusiasm for gymnastics was cut short by a bout of rheumatic fever at the age of fifteen.
After spending three years on various jobs at sea, Sturgeon sold the first of more than forty stories to McClure's in 1937. He was persuaded by friends to try his hand at writing science fiction in 1939. During the next two years Sturgeon sold more than a dozen short stories to the field's most influential editor, John W. Campbell, and quickly established himself as one of science fiction's most accomplished writers. His first collection, Without Sorcery, was published in 1948 to critical acclaim. Sturgeon's short stories continued to receive praise throughout his career; he published more than twenty collections (among the more significant are E Pluribus Unicorn, 1953; Caviar, 1955; and A Touch of Strange, 1958) and won the Hugo and Nebula Awards for his short story "Slow Sculpture" (1970).
Sturgeon's first novel, The Dreaming Jewels, was published in 1950 to mixed reviews. Its reputation has grown with time, however, because of its stylistic richness and its concern with themes that would become Sturgeon trademarks, particularly the creative imagination of children and the stifling of the individual by a stagnant and thoughtless society.
More Than Human (1953) was Sturgeon's breakthrough novel, and remains to the present day one of science fiction's most respected works. Its three connected novellas relate the growth to maturity of homo gestalt, humanity evolved to the state of integrated group consciousness. It was universally praised in the field and was one of the first science fiction novels to receive significant critical notice outside the genre. Although none of Sturgeon's subsequent novels had the immediate impact of More Than

 
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