Theodore Sturgeon - Ether Breather

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ETHER BREATHER

Astounding Science Fiction, September by Theodore Sturgeon (1918— )

Until the early seventies, Theodore Sturgeon (Edward H. Waldo) was the most heavily

reprinted writer in the science fiction universe. This was a richly deserved honor, for he had

produced a long line of outstanding, well-crafted stories featuring memorable characters.

Working within the fantasy and science fiction genres, he excelled at both, and influenced an

entire generation of writers, includ-ing Ray Bradbury.

Here is his first published story—one that exhib-its all of the talent he would develop and

nurture in succeeding years.

(Good Heavens! I've known Ted Sturgeon for forty years and never knew till now that that

wasn't his real name. Are you sure, Marty? Anyway, an editor said to me once, "If you had to

publish a collection of stories by Theodore Sturgeon, what would you call it?" I thought for a

while and said, "Caviar!" The editor said triumphantly to someone else who was in the office,

"See!!!" and that was indeed the name of the collection. IA)

Yes, Isaac, I'm sure. He legally changed his name to Sturgeon when his mother remarried.

It was "The Seashell." It would have to be "The Seashell." I wrote it first as a short story, and it

was turned down. Then I made a novelette nut of if and then a novel. Then a short short. Then a

three-line gag. And it still wouldn't sell. It got to be a fetish with me, rewriting that "Seashell." After

a while editors got so used to it that they turned it down on sight. I had enough rejection slips

from that number alone to paper every room in the house of tomorrow. So when it sold—well, it

was like the death of a friend. It hit me. I hated to see it go.

It was a play by that time, but I hadn't changed it much. Still the same pastel, froo-froo old

"Seashell" story, about two children who grew up and met each other only three times as the years

went on, and a little seashell that changed hands each time they met. The plot, if any, doesn't

matter. The dia-logue was—well, pastel. Naive. Unsophisticated. Very pretty, and practically

salesproof. But it just happened to ring the bell with an earnest, young reader for Associated

Television, Inc., who was looking for something about that length that could be dubbed "artistic";

something that would not require too much cerebration on the part of an audience, so that said

audience could relax and appreciate the new polychrome technique of television transmission.

You know; pastel.

As I leaned back in my old relic of an armchair that night, and watched the streamlined version

of my slow-moving brainchild, I had to admire the way they put it over. In spots it was almost

good, that "Seashell." Well suited for the occa-sion, too. It was a full-hour program given free to a

perfume house by Associated, to try out the new color transmission as an advertising medium. I

liked the first two acts, if I do say so as shouldn't. It was at the half-hour mark that I got my first

kick on the chin. It was a two-minute skit for the adver-tising plug.

A tall and elegant couple were seen standing on marble steps in an elaborate theater lobby. Says

she to he:

"And how do you like the play, Mr. Robinson?"

Says he to she: "It stinks."

Just like that. Like any radio-television listener, I was used to paying little, if any, attention to a

plug. That certainly snapped me up in my chair. After all, it was my play, even if it was "The

Seashell." They couldn't do that to me.

But the girl smiling archly out of my television set didn't seem to mind. She said sweetly, "I

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