Slow Sculpture (2013)
“It was “A Saucer of Loneliness,” and it was an extraordinary story. All Sturgeon stories are extraordinary, of course, but I didn’t know that then. I did know, however, that he was writing about different things than the other authors were in whatever anthology “Saucer” was in, about aliens who weren’t trying to invade and flying saucers that weren’t trying to attack, about longing and isolation and problems that can’t be solved.
That last was what impressed me most. So many of the science fict...ion stories I read firmly believed that any problem could be solved with ingenuity and determination. Sturgeon knew better.
He also knew that love is not the gooey, sentimental thing most people (and especially science fiction authors) think it is. He understood that love is problematic, dangerous, and even, at its most triumphant, ultimately tragic. And that it was just as legitimate a subject for serious consideration and scientific analysis as courage or gravity or death (and, in fact, held elements of all of those.) And he wrote about these incredibly complicated things in a simple and eminently readable style, with no information dumps, no sermons, no indication of how difficult this was to do.MoreLess
That last was what impressed me most. So many of the science fict...ion stories I read firmly believed that any problem could be solved with ingenuity and determination. Sturgeon knew better.
He also knew that love is not the gooey, sentimental thing most people (and especially science fiction authors) think it is. He understood that love is problematic, dangerous, and even, at its most triumphant, ultimately tragic. And that it was just as legitimate a subject for serious consideration and scientific analysis as courage or gravity or death (and, in fact, held elements of all of those.) And he wrote about these incredibly complicated things in a simple and eminently readable style, with no information dumps, no sermons, no indication of how difficult this was to do.MoreLess
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