Theodore Sturgeon was born Edward Hamilton Waldo on February 26, 1918, in St. George on Staten Island, New York. His parents—Edward Waldo, a paint salesman, and Christine Waldo, a teacher—separated in 1923, with his father leaving home; they eventually divorced. His mother married William D. Sturgeon in 1935, and the young man legally changed his name to Theodore Hamilton Sturgeon. There are varied accounts of how he came to be a writer that range from the fantastic (he tried writing only after giving up on becoming a circus acrobat) to the mundane (he needed money), but he first tried his hand at seamanship, attending Pennsylvania State nautical School for one term in 1935 and working as a seaman from 1935-1938.

Sturgeon sold his first published story to the McClure newspaper syndicate in 1937, and then he sold forty stories from 1937-1939, mostly to the McClure newspaper...