The late Theodore Sturgeon’s books, papers, manuscripts and correspondence will find a lasting home at the University of Kansas’ Kenneth Spencer Research Library.

The university’s Center for the Study of Science Fiction already has ties to the acclaimed writer. It gives the Sturgeon Award for the best short science fiction annually at the center’s Campbell Conference, which takes place this weekend, July 7-10.

The collection includes Sturgeon’s original manuscript and multiple film script treatments of More Than Human, the notes and outline for his Star Trek script “Amok Time,” correspondence, story ideas and drafts shared with John W. Campbell, Robert Heinlein, Edgar Pangborn, Harlan Ellison, Isaac Asimov, Kurt Vonnegut, Gene Roddenberry and T.H. White, and personal items like his adoption papers, in which his name was changed.

Til now the Sturgeon collection had been privately held in two parts — the Woodstock collection, from his widow, Marion, and the Sturgeon Literary Trust collection managed by daughter Noël.  In making the donation, Noël Sturgeon credited the work of James Gunn, professor emeritus of English created the university’s Intensive English Institute on the Teaching of Science Fiction in 1975 and the Center for the Study of Science Fiction in 1982.

“Jim’s long dedication to the teaching and scholarship of science fiction, and his particular interest in and support of my father’s work, was the main impetus behind our choice of the Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas as the home for Sturgeon’s collection of papers,” she said.

[Adapted from the press release. Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]