There's Janie, who moves things without touching them, and there are the teleporting twins, who can travel ten feet or ten miles. High in both writing quality and thoughtfulness.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. This one isīy rights seen as one of the essentials in SF history. Questions through a form of short story writing that pulls you in. Sour-faced people nowadays claim that that isn’t science fiction but nonsense.īut who cares when the writing is good? No one managed to approach the topic in The rage in the golden age of science fiction to put telepathy in your novel. The greatest threat is them losing each other. There’s an investigation of loneliness running throughout the novel, and what friendship and belonging means. They are all lost children, but pulling them apart is even worse. Throughout the book, what the telepaths are up to is less important than the sense of belonging they find in each other’s company. It’s a story of mental growth over the years. Where the story is going is never really clear, so be prepared for that if you’re an impatient reader. Part two, for example, is faster paced, with sharp dialogue part three more romantic. And just to highlight Sturgeon’s writing skill again, these parts have entirely different tones and rhythms. In parts two and three, we jump forward through the years and see them make a very curious household. Together and they become a functioning unit, even something more than human. Alone they cannot function, but put all their gifts In the end all these “freaks” end up together to form a Shocking tragedy going on in these few pages, with characters that feel very They are introduced to us in episodes full of harsh humanity. Hyper-intelligent baby and two twin toddlers who can teleport. At first it sounds a bit stiff and old-fashioned, but there is quality and poetry to it.Īlso Janie, a smart 5-year-old who can move objects with her mind, a

What’s even more remarkable is the confident, compelling, almost dictating narration by Sturgeon. One of which, the Idiot, is a man without consciousness who lives like an animal, but who has telepathic powers to make people act to his deeper desires.

In the first of three parts, named The Idiot, we are introduced to a couple of remarkable characters. It is, however, one of those books that is always mentioned on any ‘best SF of all time’ list. Cursed with cover art often featuring creepy babies, More Than Human is not a book to make you feel happy. Both for the flowing, dense, poetic writing that settles on you like a blanket, and for the grisly subject material that leaves a pit in your stomach. Starting More Than Human is like a weight settling on you.

More than human by theodore sturgeon