Sunday, April 18, 2004
More than Human - Theodore Sturgeon
While reading this book I had a number of people ask me what it was about and I really struggled to even convey the most basic plot outline. I will attempt to do slightly better here, but fear I will fail again.
The book follows the development of Homo Gestalt, a group of humans that function as one entity, a perfect symbiosis, and the next step in human evolution. There is a girl with telekinetic powers, twin negro girls who can teleport (but not with their clothes), a mongoloid baby who can answer any question you can ask, (although he can't talk, and his answers must be passed through Janie, the telekine), an older simpleton who can hear people's thoughts, and acts as the head of homo gestalt until his death and replacement by a young male telepath, and a sixth moral member is also added. Quite an amazing premise for a book written in the 1950's.
My poor rendering of the plot may make it seem a rather complex book, and it is. It is written in three separate, and quite different parts, the second of which was originally a stand-alone novella called 'Baby is Three'. The writing is beautiful, and while at times I was confused about exactly what was going on plotwise, the elegance of the prose was sufficient to distract me. It is a novel you never feel you have your head completely around, there is always something that keeps you thinking. Sturgeon examines the traumatic formation of the gestalt and the way in which it functions, and in the final part tackles the very foundations of human morals and how they would or could apply to a being such as the gestalt.
But it is definitely a very, very good book, and deserves to be thought of as a classic. I can only think that the genre is what has stopped this novel getting the literary notice it deserves.
The book follows the development of Homo Gestalt, a group of humans that function as one entity, a perfect symbiosis, and the next step in human evolution. There is a girl with telekinetic powers, twin negro girls who can teleport (but not with their clothes), a mongoloid baby who can answer any question you can ask, (although he can't talk, and his answers must be passed through Janie, the telekine), an older simpleton who can hear people's thoughts, and acts as the head of homo gestalt until his death and replacement by a young male telepath, and a sixth moral member is also added. Quite an amazing premise for a book written in the 1950's.
My poor rendering of the plot may make it seem a rather complex book, and it is. It is written in three separate, and quite different parts, the second of which was originally a stand-alone novella called 'Baby is Three'. The writing is beautiful, and while at times I was confused about exactly what was going on plotwise, the elegance of the prose was sufficient to distract me. It is a novel you never feel you have your head completely around, there is always something that keeps you thinking. Sturgeon examines the traumatic formation of the gestalt and the way in which it functions, and in the final part tackles the very foundations of human morals and how they would or could apply to a being such as the gestalt.
But it is definitely a very, very good book, and deserves to be thought of as a classic. I can only think that the genre is what has stopped this novel getting the literary notice it deserves.
