More Than Human - Softcover

Sturgeon, Theodore

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375703713 ISBN 13: 9780375703713

Publisher: Vintage, 1999

Synopsis

In this genre-bending novel--among the first to have launched sci-fi into the arena of literature--one of the great imaginers of the twentieth century tells a story as mind-blowing as any controlled substance and as affecting as a glimpse into a stranger's soul.

There's Lone, the simpleton who can hear other people's thoughts and make a man blow his brains out just by looking at him. There's Janie, who moves things without touching them, and there are the teleporting twins, who can travel ten feet or ten miles. There's Baby, who invented an antigravity engine while still in the cradle, and Gerry, who has everything it takes to run the world except for a conscience. Separately, they are talented freaks. Together, they compose a single organism that may represent the next step in evolution, and the final chapter in the history of the human race. As the protagonists of More Than Human struggle to find out who they are and whether they are meant to help humanity or destroy it, Theodore Sturgeon explores questions of power and morality, individuality and belonging, with suspense, pathos, and a lyricism rarely seen in science fiction.

Winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and International Fantasy Awards

About this title

Review:

Theodore Sturgeon created very human characters with real, intensely observed emotions. More Than Human (1953) is his story of a Gestalt or group mind, not a chilly super-intellect but a painfully assembled band of talented misfits. Lone is telepathic but a literal idiot; Janie, an abused runaway girl, moves things with her mind; Bonnie and Beanie, very young black twins, can teleport; Baby has a computer-like brain and also Downs syndrome.

In part one, this crippled Gestalt is movingly brought together from the wreckage of members' past lives. Part two sees Lone replaced by the psychologically damaged Gerry, a murderer at age eight: he must, agonisingly, confront his reasons for killing the benefactor who cherished them as individuals but menaced the all-important group. (The twins can't eat with the white folks; Baby should go to a home...) Part three artfully echoes the previous sections' long healing of Lone's body and Gerry's mind, with the now-grown Janie defiantly rehabilitating an unfortunate victim of Gerry's misused talents. Although the Gestalt is now tremendously powerful, there's still one important factor missing.

"Does a superman have super-hunger, Gerry? Super-loneliness?"

Sturgeon wrote beautifully, from the famous opening--"The idiot lived in a black and grey world, punctuated by the white lightning of hunger and the flickering of fear."--through moments of great poignancy, and unexpected images, like a starved man seeing marmalade as stained glass. More Than Human won the International Fantasy Award and holds up well today. This is recommended. --David Langford

Review:

Winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and International Fantasy Awards

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0375703713
• ISBN 13: 9780375703713
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192