Who was Theodore Sturgeon (wikipedia)

Theodore Sturgeon (February 26, 1918 Staten Island, New York – May 8, 1985) was an American science fiction author. He was born Edward Hamilton Waldo; in 1929, after a divorce, his mother married William Sturgeon, and Edward changed his name to Theodore the better to match his nickname, "Ted".

He sold his first story in 1938 to the newspaper McClure's Syndicate which bought much of his early (non-fantastic) work; his first genre appearance was "Ether Breather" in Astounding Science Fiction a year later. At first he wrote mainly short stories, primarily for genre magazines such as Astounding and Unknown, but also for general-interest publications such as Argosy Magazine. He used the pen name "E. Waldo Hunter" when two of his stories ran in the same issue of Astounding. A few of his early stories were signed "Theodore H. Sturgeon". He once ghosted an Ellery Queen novel, The Player on the Other Side (Random House, 1963).
Fantastic Adventures, August 1951, featuring Sturgeon's story "Excalibur and the Atom" (cover art by Robert Gibson Jones).
Enlarge
Fantastic Adventures, August 1951, featuring Sturgeon's story "Excalibur and the Atom" (cover art by Robert Gibson Jones).

Many of Sturgeon's works have a poetic, even an elegiac, quality. He was known to use a technique known as "rhythmic prose", in which his prose text would drop into a standard meter. This has the effect of creating a subtle shift in mood, usually without alerting the reader to its cause.

His most famous novel More Than Human (1953) won serious academic recognition particularly in Europe, where it was seen as high-quality literature.

Sturgeon wrote the screenplays for the Star Trek episodes "Shore Leave" (1966) and "Amok Time" (1967, later published in book form in 1978). The latter is known for his invention of the Pon farr, the Vulcan mating ritual. Sturgeon also wrote several episodes of Star Trek that were never produced. One of these was notable for having first introduced the Prime Directive. He also wrote an episode of the Saturday morning show Land of the Lost, "The Pylon Express", in 1975. Two of Sturgeon's stories were adapted for The New Twilight Zone. One, "A Saucer of Loneliness", was broadcast in 1986 and was dedicated to his memory. His 1944 novel, "Killdozer", was the inspiration for the 1970's made-for-TV movie, Marvel comic book, and alternative rock band of the same name.

Although Sturgeon is well known among readers of classic science-fiction anthologies (at the height of his popularity in the 1950s he was the most anthologized author alive) and much respected by critics (John Clute writes in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: "His influence upon writers like Harlan Ellison and Samuel R. Delany was seminal, and in his life and work he was a powerful and generally liberating influence in post-WWII US sf"), he is not much known among the general public and won comparatively few awards (though it must be noted that his best work was published before the establishment and consolidation of the leading genre awards, while his later production was scarcer and weaker). He was listed as a primary influence of the much more famous Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Kurt Vonnegut has stated that his character Kilgore Trout was based on Theodore Sturgeon.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Sturgeon