heodore Sturgeon's classic novel More Than Human is the story--in three parts--of a group of misfit children whose mental abilities allow them to act as a single organism. In "The Fabulous Idiot," Lone, an adolescent living a listless, feral existence, mentally compels people to give him food. Then he is drawn to meet a young girl, connecting briefly both mentally and physically with another human for the first time. Her father kills her and injures Lone, who compels him to commit suicide before fleeing.
Lone is adopted by a kind but poor farmer. But when he learns that the farmer and his wife are expecting a baby, he leaves and resumes his feral existence. Lone is joined by a girl named Janie, who has telekinetic powers, and two toddlers who can teleport. When the farmer's wife dies delivering a Mongoloid baby, Lone takes the baby, a genius who forms the final component of their gestalt and who helps Lone build an anti-gravity generator.
In "Baby is Three," a disturbed young man named Gerald seeks out a psychiatrist to remember why he murdered his adoptive mother. He slowly is able to remember being close to death, being taken in by Lone, becoming part of the gestalt, and becoming its leader when Lone was accidentally killed. The group is adopted by a woman who is the older sister of the girl who first awakened Lone. When Gerald finds that domestic security is slowly destroying their gestalt, he acts to return them all to their former isolated existence.
In "Morality," Janie rescues a man named Hip Barrows, who is listless and without memory, and nurses him back to health both mentally and physically. Hip had discovered the abandoned anti-gravity generator, and was mentally attacked by Gerald. Fully recovered, he goes with Janie to confront Gerald. Hip becomes the final part of the gestalt, its conscience, and the completed Homo gestalt organism is welcomed by others who have been nurturing humanity for centuries.
Sturgeon at his early best
More Than Human is a classic SF novel featuring profoundly original concepts about human nature and possible next steps in human evolution in a compelling series of emotionally powerful narratives that, like the gestalt being, works synergistically to become more than the sum of its parts.
The book contains many of the themes that made Theodore Sturgeon one of the most important and distinctive authors in the field. Much of his work sought to explore the nature of love, and its importance to the physical and mental health of humankind. Sturgeon was decades ahead of society in his views on human relations and tolerance, and his work therefore avoids the dated feel of most SF from the 1940s and 1950s.
The male protagonists in each of the three sections of the novel personally undergo an evolution from listlessness, loneliness and suffering from the cruelty of others, moving through stages of self-discovery and anger toward a mental wholeness gained through joining with others and discovering their own self-worth. Along the way they develop a new ethical or moral code and reach toward transcendence. It is evident from both his fiction and biographical information that this process mirrors Sturgeon's own childhood memories of estrangement and self-discovery.
Theodore Sturgeon will always be best known as a writer of short fiction. After reading More Than Human, those who read his many collections of short stories will discover a body of work that explores what it is to be human in a manner as thought-provoking as any other author, within or outside of the genre of science fiction.
