He wrote approximately 400 reviews and more than 120 short stories, 11 novels, and several scripts for Star Trek: The Original Series.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Sturgeon in 2000, its fifth class of two dead and two living writers.

Upon graduating from high school in 1935, Sturgeon pleaded to be allowed to attend college, but his step-father refused to support him, citing his frivolity.

He managed a hotel in Jamaica around 1940–1941, worked in several construction and infrastructure jobs (driving a bulldozer in Puerto Rico, operating a filling station and truck lubrication center, work at a drydock) for the US Army in the early war years, and by 1944 was an advertising copywriter.

In addition to freelance fiction and television writing, in New York City he opened his own literary agency[6] (which was eventually transferred to Scott Meredith), worked for Fortune magazine and other Time Inc. properties on circulation, and edited various publications.

[11] Carl Sagan later described "To Here and the Easel" (1954) as "a stunning portrait of personality disassociation as perceived from the inside", and further said that many of Sturgeon's works were among the "rare few science‐fiction novels [that] combine a standard science‐fiction theme with a deep human sensitivity".

[14] Though not as well known to the general public as contemporaries like Isaac Asimov or Ray Bradbury, Sturgeon became well known among readers of mid-20th-century science fiction anthologies.

[15][16] Three Sturgeon stories were adapted for the 1950s NBC radio anthology X Minus One: "A Saucer of Loneliness" (broadcast twice), "The Stars Are the Styx" and "Mr. Costello, Hero".

Sturgeon was a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of Isaac Asimov's fictional group of mystery solvers the Black Widowers.

Sturgeon ghost-wrote one Ellery Queen mystery novel, The Player on the Other Side (Random House, 1963).

Sturgeon also wrote an episode of the Saturday morning show Land of the Lost, "The Pylon Express", in 1975.

was the inspiration for the 1974 made-for-TV movie, Marvel comic book, and alternative rock band of the same name, as well as becoming the colloquial name for Marvin Heemeyer's 2004 bulldozer rage incident.

[20] He had been a lifelong pipe smoker and his death from lung fibrosis may have been caused by exposure to asbestos during his merchant marine years.

[24] Sturgeon was married three times, had two long-term committed relationships outside of marriage, divorced once, and fathered a total of seven children.

[26] Finally, his last long-term committed relationship was with writer and educator Jayne Englehart Tannehill, with whom he remained until the time of his death.

[citation needed] In 1965, Kurt Vonnegut devised the name of his fictional science-fiction writer Kilgore Trout as an obscure reference to Sturgeon's name.

Vonnegut described Trout as a notably unsuccessful writer, prolifically publishing hackwork only in pulp and pornographic magazines.

Since the characterization was unflattering, it was not until after Sturgeon's death that Vonnegut explicitly acknowledged the connection; he stated in a 1987 interview that "Yeah, it said so in his obituary in The New York Times.

Introductions were provided by Harlan Ellison, Samuel R. Delany, Kurt Vonnegut, Gene Wolfe, Connie Willis, Jonathan Lethem, and others.