tamaranth | Story link: 'The Man Who Lost the Sea' -- Theodore Sturgeon

The Man Who Lost the Sea, by Theodore Sturgeon. First published in 1959, so it's even older than me. (Thanks for birthday wishes!)

The sick man is buried in the cold sand with only his head and his left arm showing. He is dressed in a pressure suit and looks like a man from Mars. Built into his left sleeve is a combination time-piece and pressure gauge, the gauge with a luminous blue indicator which makes no sense, the clock hands luminous red. He can hear the pounding of surf and the soft swift pulse of his pumps. One time long ago when he was swimming he went too deep and stayed down too long and came up too fast, and when he came to it was like this: they said, "Don't move, boy. You've got the bends. Don't even try to move." He had tried anyway. It hurt. So now, this time, he lies in the sand without moving, without trying.

This is the kind of science fiction story that made me, as a teenager, want to write science fiction: it's compassionate, exuberant about being human, tragic without melodrama, surprising in its invention and yet built from emotions, sensations, enthusiasms that are feasibly within (or comparable to something within) the reader's experience.

I still want to write like this.