More Than Human

Theodore Sturgeon is one of SF's greatest short fiction writers, and so it is apt that More Than Human stems from a novella, Baby Is Three. Sturgeon added a part before and a part after. Each part is quite distinct, 3 novellas if you will, but taken as a whole, they are yet another, different thing. Readers familiar with this book's content will not find that surprising: More Than Human is roughly speaking about a mind-reading idiot, teleporting twin girls, a retarded baby with a supermind and a telekinetic girl, together forming something new: the "Homo Gestalt"--something more than human indeed.

I'll make a few general remarks on content and writing first, and elaborate a bit about the philosophical foundations of this book in the second part of my review--Friedrich Nietzsche, oh yes!

Obviously, the fifties were a different time, and parapsychology and the likes still held great promise. I started my reviews of Childhood's End and The Demolished Man in the same fashion. So yes, this is science fiction, even though it might read as psychic fantasy at times. Sturgeon even gives a kind of hard SF explanation for his premisses, should his reader have trouble with suspension of disbelief.

"It would lead to the addition of one more item to the Unified Field--what we now call psychic energy, or 'psionics.'" "Matter, energy, space, time and psyche," he breathed, awed. "Yup," Janie said casually, "all the same thing (...)."

But I have no interesting in pointing out where More Than Human feels a bit dated, as it remains an outstanding novel. Approach this simply as you would approach a contemporary novel like Susanna Clarke's: a supernatural tale.

The first part of the book focuses on the early life of the idiot, living in the woods, being one with nature. Certain parts felt like something Ralph Waldo Emerson or Henry Thoreau could have written. Imagine my delight when I read on Sturgeon's Wikipedia page he was a distant relative of Emerson. Sturgeon's prose is a treat. At times it has a bit of formal ring to it, but there's great lines throughout.

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