Worst Week of My Life - by S P Somtow
(contributed to Eric Weeks's
Theodore Sturgeon Page by Bill Seabrook, permission granted
to post this on the web from S P Somtow)
Somtow Papinian Sucharitkud (S P Somtow) was born in Bankok,
Thailand in 1952, and grew up in Europe. He was educated at
Eton College and Cambridge, receiving honours in English and
Music. His first career was as composer, but he began writing
in 1977 and four years later won the John W Campbell Award
for best new writer. S P Somtow has now written over eighteen
books including the galaxy-spanning Inquestor series,
the satirical Mallworld and The Aquiliad. He has
also written two highly acclaimed horror novels: Vampire
Junction has become a cult classic, and Moon Dance
is already being hailed as a landmark in the field. Other novels
by S P Somtow include Starship & Haiku, Fire from the
Wine-Dark Sea, The Shattered Horse, Forgetting
Places and Riverrun. He now lives in California.
In the following extract, Somtow expresses his sense of
personal loss over the death of Sturgeon, who he acknowledges
as a major influence on his own writing and I am grateful to
the author for giving his permission to include it on the
WWW. [The full article appeared in Fantasy Review,
Vol. 8 No. 5, May 1985, p.9]
(photo by Beth Gwinn)
I have been promising [Bob] Colins I would return to the
pages of his august magazine [Fantasy Review] for some
time. I had hoped to make a comeback with some apocalyptic,
biting satire, but it was not to be. Two weeks ago I was
visting Los Angeles, attempting to peddle "high concept" in
Hollywood. But instead I'm sitting at the keyboard comtemplating
a week of grief, both for myself and for the world of science
fiction. It's been rough, my friends.
It's obvious that I'm going to talk about Ted Sturgeon. It
seems that I was among the last people to talk to him...May 5
when I received a message from Sharon Webb, who suggested that
I call the Sturgeons. "I think he's dying," she told me. "I
spoke to him, he sounded as if he was saying goodbye." When I
'phoned him in Oregon. he spoke breathlessly, panting between
words. I told him that my new book, The Darkling Wind,
was dedicated to him. I had meant it to be a surprise, when it
came out, but I knew it would be too late. Ted said, "I love you
very much" "I love you too," I said. He said, "I know." Then
he said "Good-bye." I talked to Jayne for a while longer, but
I was barely coherent from weeping. I heard his voice in the
background; "Tell him, 'Thanks for the S P Phonecall.'"" He
was still making puns, weakened though he was. Only a few
hours after I talked to him, I discovered later, his already
critical lung condition became complicated by pneumonia, and
he went into hospital. He died three days later. His youngest
son Andros told me, "I was there and it was beautiful."
I had known Ted peripherally for about seven years, and
been close to him only for the last year of his life. But I
can barely remember a time when I had not heard of Theodore
Sturgeon. His is the single most important influence on my own
work. The earliest science fiction story I can remember reading
is The Skills of Xanadu, a story so rich in
resonance that I based an entire tetralogy on its premise.
Another seminal work of his, the novella Some of Your
Blood, was the structural, thematic, and conceptual
inspiration for my novel Vampire Junction, which is
nothing more or less than a remake of and a homage to, his
book. As always, he said it all in about a twentieth of the
time it took me.
I have promised to write a short eulogy for Charlie Brown's
Locus. It will represent, as befits the stature of that
magazine, a more public sort of mourning. Ted Sturgeon was,
and always will be, one of the most significant figures in
our field, and in a way it is hard not to find one's personal
sense of loss subsumed in the far greater awe at a great
man's passing.
Return to the Theodore Sturgeon Page
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S P Somtow Home Page
Vampire Junction - Offical Web Page (by S P Somtow himself)
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